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THE 


LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 

/ / 


JOHN FOSTER 


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ei>itj:d by 


f . eVryland 


WITH NOTICES OF MR. FOSTER AS A PREACHER AND A COMPANION, 

BY JOHN SHEPPARD, 

✓ 

AUTHOR OF “ THOUGHTS ON DEVOTION,” ETC., ETC. 


IN TWO VOLUMES. 

VOL. I. 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN WILEY, 161 BROADWAY, 

AND 13 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 


1849. 




>Qm 

Seriram Smith 
March 15, 1934 



R. Cbaiqhbad’s Power Press, 
lia Pulton Street. 


PREFACE. 


It will gratify the readefs of these volumes to find that the 
Memoir is chiefly compiled from Mr. Foster’s Letters; so 
numerous, happily, are the references to himself and the 
subjects in which he took the deepest interest, that little more 
than a proper selection and arrangement has been requisite, in 
order to form them into a continuous narrative. A biography 
drawn from such sources will be found, probably, to present a 
more vivid and truthful exhibition of character, than even a 
record, by a self-observer, however faithfully intended, if 
composed after the lapse of years, when the events, and the 
emotions they called forth, have begun to fade upon, the 
memory. 

The sentiments of affectionate veneration cherished from 
early years towards the subject of this Memoir, would preclude 
on the part of the Editor, even were his abilities equal to the 
task, any atlempt at a critical analysis of character. What 
he has aimed at accomplishing has been, to select from the 
materials placed at his disposal, whatever would best illustrate 
the intellectual and moral qualities, the principles and opinions, 
of so distinguished a man. He has not consciously allowed 
the representation to be moulded into a conformity to his own 
views or convictions, either by omission on the one hand, or 
on the other by giving greater prominence to any class of 
sentiments than the place they occupied in Mr. Foster’s esti¬ 
mation woifld justify. In a life so retired, and for the most 
part devoid of incident, a recurrence of similar trains of thought 
might be expected. For this reason many passages in the 


IV • 


PREFACE. 


correspondence have been omitted which individually would 
have been as worthy of preservation as those that are retained ; 
if still something like reiteration should be found, the Editor 
trusts that it is not to an immoderate extent, not to say that, 
within certain limits, it will serve to show more distinctly the 
writer’s mental habits,—what were his most accustomed chan¬ 
nels of thought. 

For the particulars relating to Mr. Foster’s youth, the 
Editor is indebted to his only surviving friend of that period, 
Mr. Horsfall, and to the descendants of his tutor. Dr. Fawxett. 
Use also has been made of a paper in Mr. Foster’s handwrit- 
ting—“ Hints and Questions respecting my early History : ”— 
unfortunately it is very brief, and breaks olf abruptly. 

In two instances the Editor has deviated from his first inten¬ 
tion of inserting nothing in these volumes which had been 
already published by the Author, namely, the Letters on the 
Church, and those on the Ballot; he was led to do so from the 
consideration, that these productions having only appeared in 
. a public journal upwards of ten years ago, must be new to 
many readers—that they contain Mr. Foster’s deliberate sen¬ 
timents on subjects of great social interest—and that the 
miscellaneous character of the correspondence seemed to ren¬ 
der their insertion in it more suitable than a republication with 
any of his other works. * 

On one point only of dogmatic theology Mr. Foster dissented 
from the religious community with which he was most inti¬ 
mately connected. Allusions to this subject (the Duration of 
Future Punishment) occur in two or three passages of his 


* It may here be mentioned that the Reflections on Death (vol. i., p. 52), 
and the Letters to Mr. Hughes (ii., 155), Dr. Carpenter (ii, 157), Dr. Lief- 
child (ii., 161), and Mrs. H. More (ii , 191), are reprinted from the publi¬ 
cations in which they first appeared. The Letter to an Unknown Lady 
(i., 78) had also been previously printed for private circulation ; while 
this sheet was passing through the press, the Editor received information 
that her name was Carpenter. 


PREFACE. 


• V 


early correspondence; but it is di*scussed at some length in a 
letter to a young minister, written in 1841 (vol. ii., p. 262). 
Without offering an opinion on “ the moral argument,” which 
to a mind of so high an order carried irresistible force, or 
inquiring what exceptions may be taken to those views of 
mankind and the present life to which it may appear that 
that argument owes much of its cogency—and while those 
who differ from him, and not a few, probably, who would 
assent to his views, may regret that the statements of Scripture 
are not more fully discussed—it may be permitted, in justice 
to his memory, to remark, that in Mr. Foster’s mind, as is 
evident from his other writings, this belief was associated with 
the holiest views of the Divine being, and with a most elevat¬ 
ed standard of moral excellence ; nor among those who deem 
him mistaken on this subject, could any one be found who 
would more earnestly deprecate that a theological speculation 
should occupy the thoughts to the neglect of practical, personal 
piety. (Luke xiii., 23, 24.). 

In conclusion, the Editor’s warmest thanks are presented 
to those friends of Mr. Foster (or their representatives) to 
whom the letters in these volumes are addressed. His acknow¬ 
ledgments are especially due to Mr. Cottle for the memoir of 
Miss Saunders with the accompanying letters, and for the in¬ 
troductory notice of his interesting and lamented relative. 
He would also express his obligations to the President of 
Cheshunt College for permission to insert the long and valua¬ 
ble letter on missionary undertakings (vol. ii.,p. 276), and for 
the observations on some passages written (as might be anti¬ 
cipated) in a spirit of respectful and candid criticism. 

Northampton^ May l5, 1846. 









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I 


CONTENTS 




CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Parentage and Birth—Early Character and Occupations—Brearley 

Hall—Bristol—(1770—1792) 1 

LETTERS. 

1. To the Rev, Dr. Fawcett. First impressions of Bristol—Mr. 

Hughes—Hannah More ....... 10 

2. To Mr. H. Horsfall. The improvement of time—Cultivation of 

personal piety.12 

3. To the Rev. Dr. Fawcett—on the same subject ... 13 

4. To Mr. H, Horsfall. An apology for silence—Oration on sensibi¬ 

lity .. . .15 

5. To Mr, H Horsfall 16 

6. To the Rev. Dr. Fawcett.17 

7. To Mr. H. Horsfall.19 

8. To Mr. H. Horsfall.20 

9. To the Managers of the Baptist College .... 21 

CHAPTER H. 

Newcastle-on-Tyne—Ireland—Return to Yorkshire (1792—1796) . 22 

Journal of three days at Dublin.28 

LETTERS. 

10. To Mr. H, Horsfall.32 

11. To Mr. H. Horsfall.32 

12. To Mr. H. Horsfall .... . . 33 

13. To Mr. H. Horsfall. Description of Newcastle-on-Tyne—the 

Baptist Meeting-house ... ... .34 

14. To Mr. H. Horsfall. 35 

15. To Mr. H. Horsfall.37 

16. To Mr H. Horsfall.38 

17. To Mr. H Horsfall. 39 

18. To the Rev. Thomas Langdon. French Revolution . . 40 

19. To the Rev. Thomas Langdon. Literary schemes . 40 

Sentiments on church-membership . . . , 41 

On friendship and personal reserve ... . . 42 

Political opinions ........... 43 










CONTENTS TO VOL. I. 


viii 

CHAPTER III. 

I PAQI 

Chichester—Battersea—Downend—Literary pursuits—Essay on the 
Greatness of Man—Journal—Letters on the Metropolis—(1797 
—1803). 45 

LETTERS. 

20. To his Parents. Reflections on Death (note) . . . .51 

21 . To his Parents ......... 55 

22 . To his Parents .......... 58 

23. To his Parents ......... 59 

24. To his Parents. The necessarian scheme . . . . .61 

25. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes ....... 63 

26. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Pulpit elocution . . . .65 

27. To his Parents ......... 66 

28. To an unknown Lady. On intellectual and moral excellence . 68 

29. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Disclosure of his religious views and 

experience .......... 73 

30. To an unknown Lady. On the death of a relative . . .78 

31. To Mrs. R. Mant ......... 81 

32. To Mrs. R. Mant .82 

33. To the Rev. Dr. Fawmett ........ 83 

34. To Mrs. R. Mant . ........ 86 

35. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes ....... 87 

36. To the Rev. Dr. Ryland. Remarks on a sermon . . . .91 

37. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Coleridge and Hall ... 93 

38. To Mrs. R. Mant. On friendship .... .94 

39. To Mrs. R. Manl. Consolatory suggestions on the want of conge¬ 

nial society . . . . . . . . . . 95 

40. To Mrs. R Mant. Recollections of Chichester . . . .96 

41. To Mrs. R. Mant ......... 99 

Essay on the Greatness of Man . , . . , . . .101 

Extracts from Mr. Foster’s Journal . .... 108 

42. To Miss Maria Snooke (On the Metropolis, No. 1 ) . . 156 

43. To Miss M. Snooke. (No. 2 ) . . . . . . 162 

44. To Miss M. Snooke. (No. 3) ...... . 165 

45. To Miss M. Snooke, (No. 4).170 

CHAPTER IV. 

Removal to Frome—Publication of the Essays—Eclectic Review— 

Marriage (1804—1808) ....'.. . 176 

LETTERS 

40. To Mrs. Gowing ........ 193 

47. To Mrs. R. Mant ......... 193 

48. To Miss M. Snooke. (Introductory Letter to the Essays) . 195 

49. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes ....... 199 

50. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Criticisms on the Essays . . 201 







CONTENTS TO VOL. I. 


IX 


51. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes .*203 

52. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Criticisms on the Essays . . 204 

53. To Mrs. R. Mant.207 

54. To the Rev. John Fawcett. Review of early life. Remarks on 

Books; Gibbon’s History, Baxter’s Life, Leslie’s Works-Author- 

.209 

55. To Mrs. Gowing.212 

56. To the Rev. Dr. Ryland.• . 214 

57. To Mrs. Gowing .......... 215 

58. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes ....... 216 

59. To Mrs. R. Mant. Natural scenery.219 

60. To D. Parken, Esq. Forbes’s Life of Beattie .... 220 

61. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes ....... 224 

62. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Edinburgh Review . . . 225 

63. To Joseph Cottle, Esq. (in answer to an invitation to meet S. T. 

Coleridge).225 

64. To Mrs. R. Mant.227 

65. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes .227 

66. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes ....... 228 

67. To Miss B-. Coleridge’s Lectures.229 

68. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Anticipations of marriage . . 231 

Miscellaneous observations, facts, suggestions, &c., written during Mr. 

Foster’s residence at Frome.231 


CHAPTER V. 

Re.sidence at Bourton-on-the-Water—Visit to Frome—Eclectic Review 
—Birth of his Son—Excursion into North Wales—Visit to Bris¬ 
tol and Frome—Hall’s preaching—Death of his Parents— 
Domestic Habits—Removal to Downend (1808—1817) . 242—258 

LETTERS. 


69. To Mrs. John Sheppard.258 

70. To D. Parken, Esq. Fox’s History—Death of Argyle—Edinburgh 

Review on Cevallos—Political abuses—Spanish war . . 259 

71. To D. Parken, Esq. Political views of Walker and Gilbert Wake¬ 

field—Cobbett and Burdett—Duty of exposing abuses and as¬ 
serting liberal principles—The House of Commons, what it is 
not 260 

72. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Invitation to Bourton—Apology for 

silence—Hall’s Revi'ew of Zeal without Innovation . . . 263 

A^'ote. Part of a letter from Mr. Hughes to Mr. Foster . . • 264 

73. To D. Parken, Esq. Rose’s remarks on Fox’s History—Hall’s com¬ 

position—Plooker and Jeremy Taylor.266 

74. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. The great theological writers of the 

seventeenth century—Effect of reading their w^orks—Advan¬ 
tages of reviewing . ..267 

75 To D. Parken, Esq. Suitable training for critics—Coleridge’s 

Poems—Jeremy Taylor ...... . 268 



X 


CONTENTS TO VOL. I. 


PAOC 


76. To D. Parken. On theatrical representations .... 269 

77. To Walter Sheppard, Esq. Consolatory suggestions . . . 270 

78. To the Rev. John Fawcett. Recollections of ancient friendship— 

Mr. Foster’s parents—Reviewing—Hall’s review of Crabbe’.s 
Poems .271 

79. To D. Parken, Esq. Quarterly Review on Spanish affairs—Sou 

they's review on missions—Eclectic review of Hannah More— 

New Annual Register on the French Revolution . , 273 

SO. To D. Parken, Esq. On the phrase “ gnashing of teeth”—Refer¬ 


ences to the Evil Spirit—Coleridge’s “ Friend”—The “ four 
supporters” of the Eclectic Revievr in great peril—by whom and 


how rescued ......... 274 

81. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes Effect of a recluse life—Domestic 

happiness—Mr. Foster’s parents ...... 275 

S2. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Accountability for the right use of 

talents.276 

63. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Mr. Foster’s son-^Preaching at 
Winchcomb, and new meeting-house—Cultivation of personal 
religion aided by preaching—Studies ..... 277 

84. To John Sheppard, Esq. One best possible state of character and 

plan of action for every man—Power to its very last particle is 
duty .278 

85. To D. Parken, Esq. On the legal profession compared with devo¬ 

tedness to the moral and spiritual improvement of mankind— 

Fuller—Hall . ..279 

8G. To D. Parken, Esq. The legal profession unfavorable to political 

independence and to exalted integrity ..... 280 

87. To the Rev. Dr. Ryland. Translation of oriental works, by the 

Serampore missionaries—Their absolute value—Dr. Marshman’s 
Chinese version of the Scriptures ...... 282 

88. To D. Parken, Esq. On Cobbett’s writings .... 283 

89. 'i'o the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Bible society—Mock eloquence at 

public meetings ......... 284 

90. To liis Parents. Collections at Bourton to repair the loss of the 

Serampore printing-office—Mr. Foster’s sermon on the occasion 
—His village preaching . . . . . . ' , 284 

91. To his Parents. Serampore missionaries—The doctrine of Divine 

assistance . ... 285 

92. To his Mother. On the death of aged Christians—Visit to Kidder¬ 

minster—Baxter’s Pulpit—Iron-works .... 286 

93. To his Mother. Mental character of the agricultural population 


compared with that of the manufacturing districts—Necessity of 
divine influence—Salutary effects of education and the circula¬ 
tion of the Bible—The Methodists—Allusions to Mr. Foster’s 
Father 287 

94. To his Mother. Inclemency of the season—Irreligion of travellers 
—His own youthful projects for visiting foreign countries— 
Books of travels and voyages—Their use to a preacher—The 
wonders of the other world 


288 



CONTENTS TO VOL. I. 


XI 


PAGE 

95. To Mrs. Bunn. Preachers at Bath—Coleridge’s Lectures on 

Shakspeare—Originality and splendor of his conversation— 
Theological sentiments—infelicity ..... 290 

96. To his Mother. Indifference of Monarchs to human life—The 

magnificence of Nature—Uses of picturesque scenery for the 
illustration and enforcement of truth—Consolation for aged 
Christians.291 

97. To Miss B-. Mr. Hart Davis’s collection of paintings—Bristol 

City Library—Mr. Cottle’s collection of letters by Southey and 
Coleridge—Hall’s speech for the British and Foreign School 
Society—His sermon on “ Hast thou made all men in vain ? ”— 

His treatise on “ Terms of Communion” .... 292 

98. To his Mother. Heyne’s Virgil—Review of Past life—Resolves 

for the future.294 

99. To his Mother. Views of the universe—The Omniscience and 

goodness of the Divine Being—Lay preachers .... 296 

100. To his Mother. Visit to Worcester—Reflections on passing 

through Pershore (Vide p. 50). 297 

101. To his Mother. The beauties of spring—The moral deformity of 

mankind—Rich’s “ Ruins of Babylon”.298 

102. To his Mother—Repugnance to literary labor—Review of Hoare’s 

Ancient Wiltshire.299 

103. To his Mother Domestic happiness—Gratifying instance of de¬ 

votedness to the cause of religion ..300 

104. To his Mother. Account of the exhumation of several human 

skeletons near Bourton ....... 301 

105. To the Rev. Thomas Langdon. Recollections of early friendship 303 

106. To B. Stokes, Esq. Graphical work on the Alps . . . 305 

107. To B. Stokes, Esq. Dr. Cox’s illness—Graphical work—Hall 306 




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MEMOIR. 


CHAPTER I. 

PARENTAGE AND BIRTH-EARLY CHARACffER AND OCCUPATIONS- 

BREARLEY HALL-BRISTOL. 

1770—1792. 

John and Ann Foster, the parents of the ,subject of this memoir, 
occupied, at the time of his birth, a small farm-house in the parish 
of Halifax, between Wainsgate and Hebden-bridge.* In addition 
to the labors of the farm, they devoted, part of their time to weav¬ 
ing. Mr. Foster was a strong-minded man, and so addicted to 
reading and meditation, that on this account principally he 
deferred involving himself in the cares of a family till upwards 
of forty. He received his permanent convictions of Christian 
truth from that model of apostolic zeal, Mr. Grimshaw, of Ha¬ 
worth ; but subsequently joined a small Baptist church at Wains¬ 
gate. Though a person of retired habits,j* and averse from mix¬ 
ing in society further than a sense of duty required, he possessed 
great cheerfulness and enlarged views. “ I remember,” a valued 
correspondent observes, “ seeing him in company with a dear 
relative at the time when the British and Foreign Bible Society 
was first formed, and it is impossible for me to forget the devout 
exhilaration of the venerable Christian as he conversed on the 
subject, and indulged in bright visions of hope in reference to the 
world he was leaving.” His acquaintance with theological 
writers was extensive. His conversation was generally full of 

I 

The name of the locality, which frequently occurs in the correspon¬ 
dence^ was Wadsworth Lanes ; the latter term is intended to describe a 
township road, in which a considerable number of other roads or lanes 
meet. 

t A secluded spot at the bottom of a wood near Hebden-bridge, and 
adjoining the river Hebden, with a projecting rock, whither the good man 
used to retire for prayer and meditation, is still known by the name of Johl} 
Foster’s cave. 


2 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 




instruction, and showed an acute and discriminating mind. In 
the society of which he was so valuable a member, he took a 
leading part; and on the decease of their pastor, read at their 
meetings every alternate Sunday, “ Gurnal’s Christian Armor.’^ 
It is said that when any passage struck him as peculiarly excel¬ 
lent, he would pause and express his approbation by exclaiming, 
“ Autiior, I am of thy opinion.“ That’s sound divinity.” In 
Mrs. Foster he found a partner of congenial taste, and his coun¬ 
terpart in soundness of understanding, integrity, and piety. 
They both lived to a very advanced age, but suffered much from 
bodily afHiction during^ the latter part of their course. The 
following characteristic inscription was placed on Mr. Foster’s 
tomb-stone, by his own desire. “ John Foster exchanged this 
life for a better, March 21, 1814, in the eighty-eighth year of his 
age, and the sixty-third after God had fully assured him that 
he was one of his sons.” Mrs. Foster survived her husband 
nearly three years, and died December 19, 1816. 

Tlieir eldest son, John Foster, was born September 17, 1770. 
When not twelve years old, he had (to use his own words) “ a 
painful sense of an awkward but entire individuality.” This 
was apparent in his manners and language. His observations on 
characters and events resembled those of a person arrived at 
maturity, and obtained for him from the neighbors the appellation 
of “ old-fashioned.” Thoughtful and silent, he shunned the com¬ 
panionship of boys whose vivacity was merely physical and 
uninspired by sentiment. His natural tendency to reserve was 
increased by the want of juvenile associates at home ; for his 
only brother, Thomas, was four years younger than himself, and 
they had no sisters. His parents, partly from the lateness of their 
marriage, had acquired habits of too fixed a gravity to admit of 
that confiding intercourse which is adapted to promote the healthy 
exercise of the affections. Had a freer interchange of feeling 
existed, it might have rendered less intense (though it could not 
have removed) that constitutional pensiveness of Foster’s mind, 
which at times induced “ a recoil from human beings into a cold 
interior retirement,” where he felt as if “ dissociated from the 
whole creation.” But emotion and sentiment being thus repressed, 
his outward life was marked by a timidity that amounted to 
“ infinite shyness.” A very large proportion of his feelings were 
so much his own, that he either “ felt precisely that they could 
not be communicated, or he did not feel that they could.” His 


EARLY CHARACTER AND OCCUPATIONS. 


3 


early antipathies were strong, but “ not malicious.” His associa¬ 
tions were intensely vivid ; he had, for instance, an insuperable 
dislike to a book during the reading of which he had done any¬ 
thing that strongly excited self-reproach ; or to whatever was 
connected with feelings of disgust and horror. ‘For a number of 
years he would not sit on a stool which had belonged to a man who 
died in a sudden and strange way, and whose ghost was said to 
have appeared in a barn near his house. In short his imagination 
was imperious and tyrannical, and would often haunt him with a 
scene of Indian tortures, or the idea of a skeleton meeting him 
each night in a room he had to pass through to bed. “ The time 
of going to bed was an awful season of each day.” He was 
excited to strong emotion by reading passages in favorite authors, 
such as “ Young’s Night Thoughts.” Even single words (as 
chalcedony), or the names of ancient heroes, had a mighty fascina¬ 
tion over him, simply from their sound ; and other words from 
their meaning, as her?nit* 

His sensibility, though checked in its social operation, was 
kindled into intense activity by the contemplation of natural 
scenery, which in the neighborhood was highly picturesque. 
The very words, woods and forests, would produce the most pow¬ 
erful emotion. In matters of taste the great'\ interested him more 

* “ I remember, for example, a person, very young indeed, who was so 
enchanted with the stories of Gregory Lopez, and one or two more pious 
hermits, as almost to form the resolution to betake himself to some wilder¬ 
ness, and live as Gregory did. At any time the word hermit was enough 
to transport him, like the witch’s broomstick, to the solitary hut which was 
delightfully surrounded by shady, solemn groves, mossy rocks, crystal 
streams, and gardens of radishes. While the fancy lasted he forgot the 
most obvious of all facts, that man is not made for habitual solitude, nor 
can endure it without misery, except when turned into the superstitious 
ascetic .”—Essay on the Epithet Romantic, Letter 2. 

Of Gregory Lopez, his biographer, father Francis Losa, says, that “ for 
the last six years of his life he never walked abroad, or took the wonted 
pleasures of solitude,—the prospect of a flowery field, a beautiful wood, a 
crystal stream, or so much as suflered himself to descend into a pleasant 
garden adjoining to the house he lived inr—The Holy Life, Pilgrimage, 
and blessed Death of Gregory Lopez, a Spanish Hermit in the West 
Indies. The second edition, London, IGSO. 

Mr. Foster remarks in a note to the passage quoted above from his Essays, 
that Gregory did not practise absolute solitude, but was frequently visited 
for advice in religious matters. His own juvenile predilections, however, 
led him to covet such solitude, and to retain the gratification of “ the 
pleasant garden, and crystal stream.” 

t “ The tendency to this species of romance may be caused, or may be 
greatly augmented, by an exclusive taste for what is grand, a disease to 
which some few minds are subject. All the images in their intellectual 
scene must be colossal and mountainous. They are constantly seeking 


4 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


than the beautiful; great rocks, vast trees and forests, dreary 
caverns, volcanoes, cataracts, and tempests, were the objects of 
his highest enthusiasm : and in the same way, among the varieties 
of human character, the great and the heroic excited the deepest 
interest. An abhorrence of cruelty was among his earliest 
habitual feelings. He “ abhorred spiders for killing flies, and 
abominated butchers,” though at a very early age, on two occa¬ 
sions, his curiosity led him to a slaughter-house. 

His behavior towards his parents was uniformly dutiful and 
though his juvenile manifestations of affection were checked from 
the causes already referred to, yet in mature life no one could 
give stronger proof of filial regard than he did, by contributing 
(in proportion to bis means very largely) to the support and com¬ 
fort of their declining years. He began early to assist Jthem in 
weaving, and till his fourteenth year worked at spinning wool to 
a thread by the hand-wheel. In the three following years he 
wove what are called double stuffs, such as lastings, &c. But 
while thus employed, he ‘‘ had no idea of being permanently 
employed in handicrafthe had the fullest persuasion that 
something else awaited him, not from the consciousness of supe¬ 
rior abilities, but from indulging romantic wishes and plans. “ I 
had when a child,” was his confession to Mr. Hughes, “ the 
feelings of a foreigner in the place, and some of the earliest 
musings that kindled my passions, were on plans for abandoning 
it. My heart felt a sickening vulgarity before my knowledge 
could make comparisons.” “ My involuntary, unreflecting per¬ 
ceptions of the mental character of my very few acquaintance, 
were probably just, as to their being qualified to reciprocate my 
sentiments and fancies.” Thus, full of restless thoughts, wishes, 
and passions, on subjects that interested none of his acquaintance, 
it can excite no surprise that his weaving was often performed 
very indifferently, and that the master-manufacturer by whom he 

what is animated into heroics, what is expanded into immensity, what is 
elevated above the stars But for great empires, great battles, great enter¬ 
prises, great convulsions, great geniuses, great rivers, great temples, there 
would be nothing worth naming in this part of the creation .”—Essay on 
the Epithet Romantic, Letter 2. 

* “ Qu. Whether my habit of obedience to my parents in early life did 
not lessen the general quality of independence and courage ? Accustomed 
to submit from duty to them, I had more respect for other mature persons 
than I see children have ; but to be unoppressed with respect or fear of 
grown persons in childhood, may probably contribute very much to tha 
hardy independence, as well as insolence, of youth and manhood .”—MS 
Journal, JVo. 78^^. 


EARLY CHARACTER AND OCCUPATIONS. 


5 


was employed was continually resolving that he would take no more 
of it. When Foster brought his piece into the ‘‘ taking-in-room,” 
as it is commonly called, he would turn his head aside, and submit 
with unequivocal repugnance to the ordeal of inspection. The 
kind of weaving in which he was employed allowed no scope for 
invention, being a mere dull repetition of manual operations. 
Not that he ever showed any particular aptitude for mechanical 
contrivance. The only instance of the kind known was the con¬ 
struction of a terrestrial globe, when he was ten or eleven years 
old, on which the various countries were marked with a pen. It 
had no meridian ; the frame was made of three pieces of wood, 
joined at the centre, the lower part of which served for feet. 
This self-imposed task was executed with a penknife, and was a 
long time in hand. ' He had also “ a passion” for “ making pic¬ 
tures with a pen.” 

While residing with his parents he studied closely, but iTTe- 
gularly ; he would often shut himself up in the barn for a conside¬ 
rable time, and then come out and weave for two or three hours, 
“ working,” as an eye-witness expressed it, “ like a horse.” 
His attention during this period was necessarily confined to 
English literature, his home education not allowing a wider 
range. His father, however, was ambitious of a higher training 
for him, and when the lad was only four years old, would lay 
his hand upon him and say, “ This head will one day learn 
Greek.” There was an excellent grammar-school at the neigh¬ 
boring village of Heptonstall, conducted by a Mr. Shackleton ; 
and we have no reason for supposing that the nonconformist prin¬ 
ciples of the Fosters operated on their minds, or on the master, 
to preclude their son from enjoying its advantages. Most proba¬ 
bly, his assistance at the loom could not be dispensed with, and 
was incompatible with regular attendance at the school. 

With much that was uncongenial and disadvantageous in Fos¬ 
ter’s circumstances, their moral and religious influences were 
for the most part highly salutary. In his parents he had con¬ 
stantly before him examples of fervent piety, combined with great 
sobriety of judgment and undeviating integrity. Their house 
also was the resort of their Christian neighbors for the purposes 
of social devotion, or to obtain the benefit of their advice in the 
perplexities of daily life. A meeting was held there every 
Tuesday evening, which was always closed with a prayer by Mr. 
Foster, who never omitted one petition—“ O Lord, bless the 


6 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


lads!” meaning his son John, and his young (and at that time 
only) companion, Henry Horsfall. The earnestness with which 
these words were uttered made a deep impression on the two 
youths. To trace the progress of Foster’s piety in its earliest 
stages, “ mingled,” as it was, “ almost insensibly with his feel¬ 
ings,” would be impracticable; its genuineness happily was 
proved by its “ shining more and more unto the perfect day.” 
When about fourteen years old, he communicated to the associ¬ 
ate just named the poignant anxiety he had suffered from com¬ 
paring his character with the requirements of the divine law, and 
added, that he had found relief only by placing a simple reliance 
on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for acceptance before God. Six 
days after the completion of his seventeenth year he became a 
member of the Baptist church at Hebden-bridge. His venerable 
pastor Dr. Fawcett, and other friends who had watched with 
deep interest his early thouglitfulness and piety, urged him to 
dedicate liis talents to the Christian ministry. Whether he had 
himself previously formed such a design is not known : the ob¬ 
ject of their wishes soon became his deliberate choice, and after 
giving satisfactory proofs of his abilities, he was “ set apart ” for 
the ministerial office by a special religious service. For the 
purpose of receiving classical instruction and general mental im- 
provement, he became shortly after an inmate at Brearley Hall, 
where Dr. Fawcett, in connexion with his labors as an instructor 
of youth, directed, at that time, the studies of a few theological 
candidates.* Part of each day was still spent in assisting his 
parents at their usual employments. During the rest of the time, 
his application to study was so intense as to excite apprehensions 
for his health. Frequently, whole nights were spent in reading 
and meditation, and on these occasions, his favorite resort was a 
grove in Dr. Fawcett’s garden. His scholastic exercises were 
marked by great labor, and accomplished very slowly. Many 
of his inferiors in mental power surpassed him in the readiness 
with which they performed the prescribed lessons. One method 
which he adopted for improving himself in composition, was that 
of taking paragraphs from different writers, and trying to re¬ 
model them, sentence by sentence, into as many forms of ex¬ 
pression as he possibly could. His posture on these occasions 
was to sit with a Itand on each knee, and, moving his body to and 

* Among others, one of the illustrious missionary triumvirate at Seram- 
pore, William Ward. 



HIS DECISION OF CHARACTER. 


7 


fro, he would remain silent for a considerable time, till his inven- 
tion in shaping his materials had exhausted itself. This process 
he used to call 'pumping. Fie had a great aversion to certain 
forms of expression which were much in vogue among some re¬ 
ligious people, and declared that if possible he would expunge 
them from every book by act of parliament; and often said, “ We 
want to put a new face upon things.” 

At Dr. Fawcett’s, Foster had access to a large and miscella¬ 
neous library. His course of reading, though extensive, was by 
no means indiscriminate; and it was observed that he invariably 
read his favorite authors with extreme care and attention. In 
general literature no class of books delighted him so much as 
voyages and travels; and the taste for this kind of reading which 
so gratified his imaginative faculty, and his love of the marvel- 
lous and romantic, never forsook him. In practical theology he 
was very partial to Watson’s “ Heaven taken by Storm,” the 
work mentioned by Dr. Doddridge as having been read by Col. 
Gardiner on the evening of his memorable conversion. 

Brearley Hall was environed with hanging woods, except on 
the south, where it opened by a gentle declivity to the valley. 
The scenery harmonized with Foster’s temperament; and lonely 
rambles in the surrounding woodlands formed almost his only 
recreation. On one occasion he persuaded a young companion to 
walk with him by the river’s side from evening to dawn, just, as 
he said, that they might see how the light in its first approach 
affected the surrounding scenery.* Some years afterwards, when 
on a visit to his parents, he suddenly quitted the house, and started 
off in a heavy shower to look at a waterfall in the neighborhood 
of which he had often heard, and on his return said, ‘‘ I now un¬ 
derstand the thing, and have got some ideas on the subject, with 
which I should not like to part.” 

“ No one,” an early friend remarks, “ was better qualified to 
write on -decision of character.’ It was from early life the habitual 
characteristic of his mind. He formed his purposes, and then 
proceeded to execute them ; nothing wavering. Fle was always 
examining everything that came within the range of his observa¬ 
tion ; neither wind nor weather, night nor day, offered any obstacle; 
he accomplished his purpose.” 

* “ One cannot well describe, or even seize the precise steps of the 
gradation by which, after the sun is set, the evening changes into night. 
The appearances in the progress of morning are somewhat more palpable.” 
— MS. Misc. Observations, 1805 


8 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


In his sermons, not less than in his conversation, he constantly 
aimed at imparting freshness to ordinary topics, and generally 
succeeded. Yet it happened not unfrequently that his hearers 
were more startled and perplexed than edified. He once preached 
at Thornton, near Bradford, from the words, “ I am the way, the 
truth, and the life.” His object was to show the awful condition 
of the human race, had not a way of access been provided by 
God ; but his novel mode of treating the subject led an old man 
(the oracle of his little circle) to remark, “ I don’t know what he 
has been driving at all this afternoon, unless to set riddles.” “ He 
is going to take us to the stars again,” was a frequent observation 
of his hearers. Yet instances were not wanting in which his dis¬ 
courses made a salutary and indelible impression ; two especially, 
one from the words, “ And on his head were many crowns,” the 
other on, “ Doing the will of God from the heart,” were long re¬ 
membered. 

He was very assiduous in visiting the cottages of the poor, 
particularly the sick and aged ; on these occasions, besides 
religious conversation and prayer, he generally read the 145th 
Psalm.* 

After spending about three years at Brearley, application was 
made for his admission into the Baptist College, Bristol.f He 
entered that institution shortly after the decease of the president. 
Dr. Caleb Evans, a man deservedly held in high esteem among 

* “ Prayer, and kindly intercourse with the poor, are the two great safe¬ 
guards of spiritual life; it’s more than food and raiment.”— Dr. Arnold 
{Life and Correspondence, vol. ii., p. 58, fifth edit.). 

t The recommendation to the managers of the institution was in the 
following terms : 

Gentlemen-,— The bearer, Mr. John Foster, has been for some years in 
full communion with us ", and, as far as we know, his conversation has 
been conformable to his Christian profession. We apprehend the great 
Head of the Church has bestowed upon him such gifts and abilities, as will, 
through his blessing, render him publicly useful. We, and several other 
churches in this neighborhood, have had trial of his gifts; and, candid 
allowance being rnade for his youth, it is hoped he may, in due time, be 
an useful laborer in the Lord’s vineyard. He wishes to devote a little more 
time to preparatory study, and requests you will be so kind as to receive 
him under your patronage for one year, and grant him the usual privileges 
in that seminary over which you preside. We commend him therefore 
to you, and, hoping you will receive him under your protection, subscribe 
ourselves, 

Gentlemen, 

Your affectionate brethren in Christ, 

Signed by us, in behalf of ) Fawcett, 

the rest, 14, 1791. S William Greaves, 

William Thomas. 


AT BRISTOL COLLEGE. 


his connexions ; the classical tutor, Robert Hall ( “ clarum et 
raemorabile nomen !”), had just removed to Cambridge; but his 
place was ably filled by Joseph Hughes, the founder and secre¬ 
tary of the British and Foreign Bible Society ; he was only one 
year and eight months older than Foster; their minds were con¬ 
genial, and the preceptor and the pupil were each soon merged in 
the friend. In piety, in mental activity, in ambition of intellectual 
superiority, in a deep shade of pensiveness, they resembled one 
another ;* and if one possessed greater originality of thought and 
affluence of imagination, the other probably was superior in a 
more exact intellectual training, and had attained a greater ma¬ 
turity of religious character and sentiment. 

• Memoir of the late Rev. Joseph Hughes, by Dr. Liefchild, p. 145. 


10 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


LETTERS. 


I. TO THE REV. DR. FAWCETT. 

Bristol, Oct. 15, 1791. 

I AM wishing to offer some kind of apology for having neglected so long 
to write to you. The kindness you have uniformly expressed towards me, 
and the many advantages I have enjoyed under your care, entitle you to 
the earliest notices of my circumstances, and at the same time leave me 
no room to doubt that you still feel interested in my happiness, and that 
any intelligence respecting my situation will not be unacceptable. I in¬ 
tended to write to you immediately after I had written to Lanes, which 
was the reason why I did not mention you in that letter. The delay 
may be attributed to a complication of circumstances. I wished to defer 
it till I could form some judgment of my real situation, and of the state 
of things at Bristol. Seldom indeed does any great advantage result 
from procrastination. I have been in this city now about four weeks; I 
travelled by the coach from Manchester to Birmingham, and thence in 
two days walked to Bristol, though a length of eighty-eight miles. You 
will not wonder that at first I felt myself somewhat gloomy and desolate, 
notwithstanding kind treatment and agreeable accommodations. The* 
separation from my friends had made a painful impression on my mind, 
which no object I met with here tended to erase ; and the contrast be¬ 
tween the delightful situation, the most agreeable and improving con¬ 
versation, and the ever estimable friends of Brearley Hall, and the smoke 
and noise, and unknown and uninteresting society of Bristol, produced 
sensations by no means in favor of the latter. Those feelings, however, 
which do honor to human nature, may be indulged to an unmanly ex¬ 
cess. I have by this time recovered most of the cheerfulness and gaiety 

of which my mind—a mind not the most gay, indeed, or sprightly_is at 

any time susceptible. In fact, my situation is extremely agreeable. 
The cause which contributes most to render it so is friendship. I have 
no intimacy indeed with any of the young men here. I treat them all 
and am treated by them, with the most friendly kind of civility, but I feel 
not the least inclination to any particular attachments. It has always 
been my ambition to associate with those who are superior to myself. 
This ambition was often gratified at Brearley Hall; and here I am be¬ 
come very intimate with Mr. Hughes—a circumstance favorable both to 
my satisfaction and improvement. I generally spend several hours with 
him every day in reading, in conversation, or walking. He is free, 
sprightly, and communicative. He possesses great energy of mind—a 


LETTERS. 


11 


variety and originality of thought. His imagination is vivid, and with¬ 
out any great effort supplies an endless train of ideas and images; and, 
which is the most important quality, he seems to have a deep, experi¬ 
mental acquaintance with religion. I admire him much as a preacher. 
.... Dr. Evans is an universally respected, beloved, and lamented 
character. There have not probably been very many instances of an 
union of piety, learning, benevolence, and prudence, equally consistent 
and shining with that which was displayed in him. But he is now no 

more.The congregation at Broadmead is large and splendid, and 

the church numerous. The number of us young parsons amounts to 
about twelve—some of us not very great or amiable characters, it must 

be confessed.There are, however, two or three among us very 

promising. The academy possesses many advantages, among which 
are the extensive and valuable library and philosophical apparatus, the 
very satisfactory accommodations, and the agreeable situation of tlie place 
—agreeable, I mean, when compared with most other parts of the city. 
Bristol is a flourishing commercial city, but by no means elegant and 
fine, nor distinguished by intelligence and taste. Bath, however, to 
which I made an excursion lately with Mr. Hughes, exhibits a great 
profusion of elegance and splendor. 

.... A few days since, in company with Mr. Hughes, I spent a day 
with Miss Hannah More. Slie, with four other sisters, all unmarried, 
resides at the distance of about ten miles from the city. They are all 
very sensible and agreeable, but she is quite intere.sting. She was 
familiarly acquainted with Johnson^ and many other distinguished per¬ 
sons who are dead, and is equally well known to most of the geniuses 
of the present day. Perhaps her poetical abilities, though acknowledged 
very great, form one of the least of her excellences. If piety and be¬ 
neficence can give lustre to a character, hers is transcendent. She lives 
in a kind of retirement, little noticed, except by her distant friends; and, 
in conjunction with her sisters, whose minds are congenial with her 
own, employs most of her time in benevolent undertakings, in visiting 
the poor, furnishing them with necessaries, and procuring instruction for 
their ignorant children, at the very time that she could figure among 
poetesses and peeresses. Some of her undertakings, in the design, con¬ 
duct, difficulties, and success, are so very' remarkable, and discover such 
evident interpositions of divine providence, that they almost assume the 
air of romance. If I ever saw the spirit of the Redeemer and his re¬ 
ligion realized, it is in her conversation and character. I expect the 
pleasure of visiting her to be pretty often repeated. 

Tplease myself with the hope that you are on the whole comfortable 
and prosperous, both in respect to religion, and your other engagements. 

I request you will continue to pray for me. I make my apology for 
having so long neglected to write. It is indeed with difficulty that I can 
sequester as much time as I would for purposes of this kind. I hope I 
am learning in some measure to improve my time; one of the most im- 



12 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


portant, and to me most difficult of all lessons. In religion I hope I am 
rather advancing than declining. I have to attend to Latin and Greek 
every day. A person in the city is at present reading a course of lec¬ 
tures in experimental philosophy, which most of us attend. 


II. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

Bristol, J\''ov. 16, 1791. 

If you had been my Dulcinea I certainly durst not now write at all, 
after having delayed it so long. You see I am attempting to pass off 
with a jest what you may think needs a serious apology. I confess it 
does; but as the case stands I have none to offer. I have been prevented 
by an odd mixture of business and idleness, each of which you know is 
unfavorable to writing letters, particularly when letters cost so much 
labor as mine generally do. I must yet request you to dismiss the sus¬ 
picion that “ I have forgotten you all ” at Brearley Hall, and for this 
reason, that I assure you it is without foundation; at the same time, a 
sort of confidence that you are all mighty gay and felicitous, enjoying 
yourselves and one another, has done something toward quieting my con¬ 
science in the neglect of writing.lam more obliged to you 

than I can express for your very curious and sprightly letter. Nothing 
could have been more acceptable, or more entertaining, not only on ac¬ 
count of its coming from you, but on account also of its contents. It 
will, besides, furnish me with a few ideas (a scarce article at Bristol) to 
reverberate, and assist me to fill three sides of a sheet, which might 

otherwise have been a very difficult affair.My regard for 

you and my other worthy friends at Brearley Hall and at Mount, is not 
at all diminished by absence and distance. Perhaps I never felt it more 
warm than at this moment. Probably I shall never enter with such real 
cordiality into any other friendships. I feel no inclination, nay, I feel a 
strong aversion, to any attempt to cultivate general or numerous intima¬ 
cies. Nature never formed me for it. Imagination itself can scarcely 
place me in a more perfectly pleasing situation than ascending the hill 
below your father’s, and sitting down to tea with your mother. I hope 
to renew this delightful satisfaction, if all continue well, in something 
less than eight months. And within this interval I flatter myself (and 
I am ready to suppose you do the same) with the hope of making very 
great improvement in learning and in piety. What an estimable pos¬ 
session is time ! Permit me to urge you, as I am urging myself, to a 
nobler improvement of it. I have lately laid down a kind of plan for the 
distribution of my time and studies, which I already find to be of service. 
One part of it is, to devote all the time from rising in the morning, which 
is generally about .six o’clock, till half-past eight (when we have family 
worship succeeded by breakfast), to'prayer and reading the bible, together 




LETTERS. 


13 


with a little of some other book of a religious and devotional kind, as 
Night Thoughts, Saurin’s Sermons, or some other. I trust you are 
growing in religion ; probably neither of us can be more fully convinced 
than we are, of the vast importance of this. We see some in low cir¬ 
cumstances in life, privileged with none of our advantages for the acqui¬ 
sition of knowledge, for retirement, reading, and oontemplation, yet 
glowdng with the zeal, and melting with the warmth of piety. Is not the 
world then entitled to expect from ws, something approaching to angelic 
excellence ? “ Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much 

required !” I am resolving to be more intimately conversant with the 
scriptures, and a better resolution, I think, cannot be formed. I wish to 
read them with vigilant attention and devotional seriousness. A diligent 
and pious frame of heart will be found, I believe, the best assistance to 
understand the sacred books. As to expositors, we have here Gill, 
' Henry, Poole, Doddridge, Guyse, Patrick, Hammond, Owen, and twenty 

more ; but I very rarely open any of them.Nothing could 

be better adapted to check levity, than the account you give me of Mr. 
Ingham* Where is the person, as you observe^more likely for life than 
he was ? Neither of us, I suppose, can stand in any comparison. Hap¬ 
piness, my friend, absolutely consists in such a state of mind, that death 
shall be welcome, and life still shall be sweet; that is, in being equally 

prepared to improve life, or to resign it.I often think that 

no gratitude can be equal to the mercies with w’hich I am indulged. I 
very seldom do anything in the way of preaching. I hope you will not 
cease to pray for me. 


III. TO THE REV. DR. FAWCETT 

Bristoly Dec. 26, 1791. 

I THINK that absence, distance, and time, have augmented my regard 
for you, and my other much valued friends at Brearley. The recollec¬ 
tion of the advantages and the pleasures of my situation, when that situa¬ 
tion placed me near you, always affects me with gratitude to heaven, with 
self-congratulation, and at the same time with feelings of regret from the 
remembrance of pleasures which I now enjoy no more. Brearley is the 
scene to which fancy recurs with fondness; and I often feel a wish to 
give some more expressive testimony than I am able of the gratitude and 
respect I bear to you, and the other characters who honor it. I hope 
that' the happiness of having you for a friend will ever continue, and 
that I shall ever be concerned to deserve it. Next to the favor of God, 
my ambition aspires to the esteem and friendship of such men as you; 
and I wish to acquire and exhibit that superiority of character and abili¬ 
ties which will most effectually tend to ensure them. My present cir¬ 
cumstances are very favorable to improvement both in literature and 



14 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


piety. I wish to advance with rapid, and still accelerated progress. 
The value of time, the deficiencies of my character, and possible attain¬ 
ments, flash upon my mind with more forcible conviction than ever be¬ 
fore. I can sometimes grasp the idea of universal and transcendent 
excellence; and it always excites, at least, a temporary ebullition of 
spirit. I cannot doubt the possibility of becoming greatly wise and 
greatly good; and while such an object places itself in view, and invites 
pursuit, no spirit that possesses the least portion of ethereal fire can re¬ 
main unmoved. I despise mediocrity. I wish to kindle with the ardor 
of genius. I am mortified almost to death, to feel my mind so contracted, 
and its energies so feeble or so torpid. I read such writers as Young 
and Johnson with a mixture of pleasure and vexation. I cannot forbear 
asking myself. Why cannot I think in a manner as forcible and as origi¬ 
nal as theirs ? Why cannot I rise to their sublimities of sentiment, or 
even to an elevation still more stupendous ? Why cannot I pierce 
through nature with a glance ? Why cannot I effuse those beams of 
genius which penetrate every object, and illuminate every scene ? I be¬ 
lieve the possible enlargement of the human mind is quite indefinite, and 
that Heaven has not fixed any impassable bounds. 

I am solicitous to cultivate warm and growing piety. I know that on 
it happiness entirely depends, and that without it intellectual pursuits 
either cannot be successful, or in proportion to the degree of success 
will be injurious. That character is the most dignified which reflects 
the most lively image of the divine excellence. Heaven is the proper 
region of sublimity; and the more we dwell there, the more we shall 
triumph in conscious grandeur of soul. Intimate communion with the 
Deity will invest us, like Moses, with a celestial radiance. At the same 
time, I am experimentally convinced that the spirit of religion is extremely 
delicate and fine, and no moderate degree of vigilance is requisite to 
preserve it. This vigilance is absolutely incompatible with indolence 
, and thoughtlessness ; and these are the evil spirits that most particularly 
haunt me, and from which I have suffered, and still suffer, greatly. Oh 
for a mind all alive to religion, completely consecrated to God, and 
habitually devotional! Habitual piety is indeed a very interesting sub¬ 
ject : it has lately often struck my thoughts. I am wishing to know 
how far, and by what means, it is really attainable. Though I would 
wish to concentre in myself all the genuine piety in the world, I yet 
suspect there is such a thing as a romaniic religion. Amidst the labo¬ 
rious, the even painfully laborious, efforts which religion requires, amidst 
opposition from within and from without, amidst the intricacies that per¬ 
plex, the burdens that fatigue, the impediments that obstruct, and the 
allurements that divert, I hope I am making some progress; and I 

request that your prayers may promote it.Intelligence of any 

importance seems rather scarce at the north end of Bristol; probably not 
so at Brearley, as it is communicated through so many different chan¬ 
nels. I hear of no very capital projects or manoeuvres in the republic 



LETTERS. 


15 


of letters, as it is called. Perhaps you have seen Cowper’s Homer. I 
still cannot but wish that he had been differently employed. I have not 
taken much notice of it. On reading a few passages I thought, This 
may possibly be Homer himself, but if it is. Pope is a greater poet than 

Homer.I continue on terms of the most perfect intimacy with 

Mr. Hughes, which I consider as a very great felicity. His age is only 
twenty-three. His mental vigor is very great, and of such a nature as 

to communicate a kind of contagion.Next week I expect to be 

some time with Mr. Hughes at Bath, where the Miss Mores reside dur¬ 
ing the winter. You will allow that a few of my hours may be well 
spent in forming plans of study and improvement for the next half year 
and that the design is laudable of beginning to live anew. 


IV. TO MR. H. HORSFAIL. 

Bristol, Jan. 6, 1792. 

I MOST humbly beg your pardon for this long interval between receiv¬ 
ing and answering your letter. You must know I affect to be b. genius, 
and geniuses claim an indulgence to be irregular. But yet, if I had felt 
a proper degree of sympathy with you in the very afflictive circum¬ 
stances which your letter describes, my sensibility would have led me to 
write sooner. As I will never relinquish the character of sensibility, 
which has been generally found connected with genius, I exculpate my¬ 
self by observing that when you wrote “ the bitterness of death was 
past,” and your letter was calculated, not fo infuse melancholy, but to 
excite those pleasurable sensations which are felt in reflecting on sorrows 
that arc gone. At the same time, I feel for you painfully in the appre¬ 
hension that the afflictions from which I hope you at present experience 
a happy exemption, may too frequently return upon you. For my own 
part, I confess I wish to be taught to sympathize with sorrow without so 
much of the discipline of actual suffering. Still, however, may I be 
resigned to the gracious will of Heaven ! 

I was requesting pardon ;—how fortunate that other mortals are guilty, 
and need pardon as well as myself! This is particularly the case with 
you. Certainly, to send me half a sheet was most notorious; and but 
for the passionate cries, and entreaties, and promises with which you 
conclude, I should fall on you without mercy. Even these can scarcely 
secure you from the effects of my indignation; but I will endeavor to 
calm the furious passion, with the hope that you will never do so again, 
if I will but excuse this once. It is long since I wrote to you before, 
but silence itself may instruct. As for instance, from my silence you 
may infer, first, that my esteem for you is such that I have not words in 
which to express it; secondly, that the city suggests no new ideas to be 
communicated ; thirdly, that 1 have not yet fallen in love; or, fourtlily, 




16 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


that I dare not tell it; fifthly, that I am not extremely concerned about 
what you tell me of certain persons of our acquaintance, and their 
attempts and designs. These are inferences which you would not, per¬ 
haps, have drawn, but could anything be more obvious ? . . . . 

.... I am a little acquainted with two or three very worthy and 
amiable females, and from them, you must know, my intellectual quali¬ 
ties have gained me great respect, . . . ’Tis time to inform you that you 
are a set of ignorant, tasteless things in Yorkshire, for these ladies 
pronounce that my countenance, though very grave, has yet a pleasing 
air, expressive of sensibility and benevolence. What silly folks you 
were to take up a different opinion when I was among you !....! 
perfectly accord to your very serious refiexion on ruffles and hair-dress¬ 
ing. But it happens oddly, that while you are grave, I am in the humor 
to laugh. I am thinking how you would look with powder. It is said 
to give my appearance a considerable advantage; you will not therefore 
wonder that I frequently use it. What contributed a good deal to gain 
me the respect of the ladies I mentioned was, an Oration on Sensibility, 
written as an academical exercise; it has been bandied about, and read, 
more than it deserves. - It was sent, without my knowing it, to Dr. 
Stennett, and is now, I believe, somewhere in Oxfordshire. I have re¬ 
peatedly designed to burn it. I think I have produced an abler composi¬ 
tion since. I wrote all the sermon I preached last Sunday at our meet¬ 
ing in Broadmead.I hope you are advancing in learning and 

religion. I sometimes ask myself what it is to live well. It is to be 
pious, benevolent, and diligent. To be pious, is to be fully consecrated 
to God—to cherish his love, to obey his commands, and to live and act 
with a direct view to his glory. To be benevolent, is to be kindly affec- 
tioned towards men, to pray for them, to employ all our ability for their 
good. To be diligent, is [the manuscript is here imperfect] .... I 
would urge you to read the Bible, morning and evening .... the genu¬ 
ine, original, untainted fountain, with an attention exclusive of almost 
all . . . The work of religion is difficult, difficult indeed. “ Trust in the 
Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy heart.” I request 
an interest in your prayers. 


V. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

Bristol, March 13, 1792. 

.... The engagements and possessions of this life are to us valua¬ 
ble, precisely in that proportion in which they prepare, or conduce to 
prepare us for another. You express a hope of being a better man by 
the time you see me. I would cordially and ardently adopt the same 
hope for myself. If Providence shall bring about that event, at the time 
and in the manner desired, it must yet be preceded by a long train of 





LETTERS. 


17 


hours, each of which is given for some valuable end. Let us, my friend, 
try with earnestness of what improvements our intellects and our piety are 
really capable, in such a space of time. I have no news for you. This 
is a soil not fertile of remarkable incidents. Commercial pursuits (and 
what else can Bristol exhibit ?) do not always interest the philosopher: 
it is certain they have seldom interested me ... . 


VI. TO THE REV. DR. FAWCETT. 

Bristol, March 30, 1792. 

If any engagement has a claim to be thought pleasing, it certainly 
must be that of writing to you. To converse with one that is always 
kind, and who views everything and every character with an eye of can¬ 
dor, is truly grateful; and writing, as the substitute for personal inter¬ 
course, admits a degree of the same pleasure. That I have not written 
oftener, therefore, must be attributed to that excessive indolence which 
is unwilling to purchase even the highest satisfaction at the price of a 
little mental labor. I am so fully conscious of this unfortunate quality, 
that I am sometimes ready to wish myself engaged in some difficult un¬ 
dertaking, which I absolutely must accomplish, or die in the attempt. 
I am convinced that on me a retired life would lose many of its advan¬ 
tages. The composure of it, instead of removing obstructions and 
exciting my powers to action, would soothe them into languor and de¬ 
bility. . . . Long as it is since I wrote to you before, no incident worthy 
of particular notice has occurred—or perhaps the very circumstance of 
my being apt to suffer thiiqgs to pass without notice, is itself the reason 
why I do not distinguish and recollect particulars. Many events may 
possibly have engaged the attention of other men, which I was too 
thoughtless to observe, or too ignorant to comprehend their consequence. 
I am a very indifferent philosopher, I confess, for I have neither curiosity 
nor speculation. This inattention to the external world might be ex¬ 
cused if the deficiency were supplied from within. If I were like some 
men, a kingdom or a world within myself, superior entertainment should 
soon make my friends forget the uninteresting particulars of ordinary 
intelligence. How enviable the situation—to feel the transition from 
the surrounding world into one’s own capacious mind, like quitting a 
narrow, confined valley, and entering on diversified and almost bound¬ 
less plains. If this felicity were mine, I might be equally unconcerned 
to obtain or to recollect the news of the town. I might explore new 
and unknown regions of intellect and fancy—and after having carried 
my career to a distance which the most erratic comets never reached, 
return with the most glowing and amazing descriptions of the scenes 
through which I had passed. 

Your family is by its constitution subject to perpetual change. It is 

3 



18 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


formed not for itself, but for the world; not to increase private and do¬ 
mestic happiness, hut to subserve the public welfare. This considera¬ 
tion, I think, must he capable of yielding high satisfaction. There is 
something peculiarly animating in the idea of diflusing knowledge and 
happiness through the world. . . . 

.... I often feel a solicitude to know what are those schemes of 
usefulness which unite, in their greatest degrees, cool reason and the 
boldness and spirit of generous adventure. A few nights ago I was in 
company with a Quaker, a man whom I would select as one of the first 
specimens of possible human excellence. His sentiments discover a 
superiority of intellect, and his character admits, I believe, few rivals. 
IJis conversation was chiefly directed to prove the practicability of many 
designs which that kind of wisdom which is unconnected with benevo 
lence and generosity is always ready to condemn, and which the world 
deem romantic and preposterous. His ideas, which were quite original, 
struck me with all the force of truth, and scarcely wanted the assistance 
of many interesting facts with which he illustrated and confirmed them. 
It appears to me that but little is accomplished, because but little is 
vigorously attempted ; and that but little is attempted, because difficulties 
are magnified. . A timorously cautious spirit, so far from acting with 
resolution, will never think itself in possession of the preliminaries for 
acting at all. Perhaps perseverance has been the radical principle of 
every truly great cliaracter. 

I am sometimes apprehensive that I do not give to religion that 
preference of regard which it merits, and that superiority of influence 
witli which it ought to operate on the system of life. I feel that religion 
is the life of every genuine excellence, but must lament an unhappy 
tendency rather to deviate from it than embrace it. Religion presents 
itself in an appearance difierent from direct and honest Christianity—a 
little more softened to the spirit of the world—affecting, at the same 
time, to retain all the essential qualities of Christianity. When led 
into the scenes of life by this kind of equivocal piety, men are apt to 
lose the true spirit and feelings of religion; they substitute a certain 
chimerical generosity of spirit for Christian zeal, and, inflamed by a de¬ 
lusive idea of greatness and expansion of mind, break down the sacred 
boundaries that separate important truth from dangerous error. I find 
that in attempting to clear away the extraneous matter which ignorance 
and prejudice have attached to religion, there is danger of a presump¬ 
tuous freedom which injures the great object itself. Everything rises 
in proof of the necessity of seeking both our happiness and our wisdom 

entirely from on high.Two of those whom I left in your family 

are, it seems, taken off by death. There is at least thus much of the 
consolatory in the event, that death has intercepted the many sorrows 
and sins which the train of advancing life would have brought on; and 
if the loss shall give those who feel it most sensibly more fully to God, 
’t will be happily compensated.I often recollect Dr. Young’s ex- 



LETTERS. 


19 


pression, “Give thy mind sea-room.” There are minds, and I must 
admire them, that disdain all restraints but those alone which the Deity 
has imposed. Perhaps it must be allowed, at the same time, that spirits 
of infinite vigor and fire are not the most necessary characters in the 
government of the world, or the cause of religion. The greatest abili¬ 
ties are not always well directed, and when well directed do not ahvays 

produce an adequate effect.Hall is expected by his relations in 

Bristol next month. I shall be quite eager to see him. The opinion 
which the most sensible here entertain of his powders leads me to think 
that all the accounts you have heard rather fall below than exaggerate 
them. 


VII. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

Bristol, April 2, 1792. 

.... Depend on it, if I find any faults about you when I see you again, 
I shall criticise them with the most bitter and sarcastic severity. For 
instance, if you are silent in a circle of sensible friends, I shall either 
say you are unsocial, or insinuate that you are ignorant. If I find you 

have told all your secrets and mine to Miss-and Lady-, I shall 

remind you that it is necessary there should be some silly fellows to serve 
the ladies for playthings; just as children must have their dolls. If you 
continue in the use of sugar, I shall greatly suspect your generosity and 
humanity ; I never taste it in any form. I have even almost forgot it, so 
that I never feel the want of it. Tea is now become as agreeable with¬ 
out sugar as before it was with it.This is a fair warning now. If 

you are conscious of any of these faults, I hope you will take care to 
reform in time. I wonder whether, when we may appear together again, 
some of our friends wull like us as ill as they did before. I hope we 
shall give no just cause for their ill-natured observations, and their idle 
remarks. But if they will find, or make a cause, let them fully please 
themselves.Let us mortify their captiousness by that kind of con¬ 

tempt alone w'hich is expressed by displaying a noble superiority of un¬ 
derstanding, manliness, and piety. The impertinence of conceit is un¬ 
worthy of notice ; but let us be anxiously concerned that neither our 
enemies nor our pretended friends may ever have it in their power to 
impeach our characters with respect to any serious and important matter. 
I trust, my dear friend, we shall ever stand at a distance from everything 
vain and foolish,—everything foppish and affected,—everything proud, 
self-important, and disgusting. Whenever we discover a disregard of 
serious and important concerns, and whenever we appear as if we thought 
ourselves too dignified or too wise to converse and be familiar, occasion¬ 
ally, at least, with the meanest and most ignorant, w^e shall betray our¬ 
selves into our enemies’ hands, and justify in a measure their reflexions. 






20 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


I hope you go forward with pleasure in the pursuits of learning. It is 
delightful to feel one’s mind enlarging, to contemplate an endless suc¬ 
cession of new objects, to extend our conquests in the regions of intellect 
and fancy, and to be perpetually aspiring to the sublimities of knowledge 
and of piety. We find that resolution and diligence are never exerted in 
vain. Sincere and well-directed efforts will promote our religion, as much 
as study will improve us in learning, or experience increase our prudence. 
Everything is attainable which we can justify ourselves in desiring; and 
certainly we cannot too warmly desire whatever can make us more happy 
in ourselves, or qualify us to impart happiness to others. Nothing can 
so effectually expand the mind as the views which Religion presents ; 
for the views of Religion partake of the magnitude and glory of that 
Being from whom Religion proceeds. Their amplitude will extend, and 

their dignity will exalt, the mind. 

Amidst your pleasures and your prospects, surely you can admit one 
thought of pity for a poor exile on whom love never smiles, before whom 
no pleasing prospects open, and to whom life itself is insipid. But, if 
life cannot make me happy, let it never make me malignant. If the 
visits of happiness to me are but transient, that very circumstance, per¬ 
haps, renders them more permanent to my friends. While the inhabitants 
of the North Pole are involved in a tedious night, those of the South enjoy 

perpetual day.Perhaps 1 may hope to hear from you before I go off 

to Africa.This minute I have received a letter from Mr. T. Stovin, 

at Birmingham, in which he particularly inquires whether I ever hear ' 
from you. He writes seriously. In my last to him I expressed a wish 
that he would hear Mr. Pearce, a lively, popular young preacher at Bir¬ 
mingham, who a few years since went from our Academy. He writes : 

“ On your recommendation I went to hear Mr. Pearce. He is, I think, 
an excellent preacher, and puts me in mind of those frequent admonitions 
and instructions I have heard from good Mr. Fawcett. These instructions 
afford me an ample theme of reflexion,” &c. I always thought him a 
youth of a generous spirit. How happy should I be to see that spirit 
ennobled by religion! 


VIII. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

Bristol, April 19, 1792. 

.... I once felt something like envy in observing how Mr. H. and 
several others of the same class would preach; but I believe I should not 
feel the slightest degree of it now. I think I should feel no more diffi¬ 
culty in preaching before twenty of them than before so many children. 
You say I must do something great in the preaching line when I come 
into Yorkshire. Let not my Yorkshire friends expect too much. Pro¬ 
bably there never was a more indolent student at this or any othei Academy. 




LETTERS. 


21 


I know but very little more of learning or anything else than when I 
left you. I have been a trifler all my life to this hour. When I shall 
reform, God only knows ! I am constantly wishing and intending it. 
But my wishes and intentions have thus far displayed, in a striking 
degree, the imbecility of human nature. To-morrow is still the time 
when this unhappy system of conduct shall be rectified. 

My dear friend, I hope you are diligent and pious. Time is infinitely 
valuable. Oh ! do not sufl’er it to be lost. I hope you already possess 
and exercise that wisdom which I hope at last to attain. The work of 
life is great—greater to me, in proportion to the long season that I have 
neglected it. I perceive that religion does not promise in order to deceive, 
nor threaten in order to dismay; her intentions are uniformly kind. Be 

much in prayer, and in your prayers do not forget me.Our vacation 

will commence in five or six weeks; if well, I must then spend a week 
or two in visiting Bath, Cowslip Green, the country residence of the Miss 
Mores, and some other places. The time I shall be in London is un¬ 
certain. 


IX. TO THE MANAGERS OF THE BAPTIST COLLEGE. 

Bristol, May 26, 1792. 

Honored Gentlemen, —The expiration of the term of literary privileges 
reminds me of the acknowledgments due to those to whose liberality I 
owe them. 

One year has passed, attended with the important favors of your patro¬ 
nage, which has given value to time by conferring the advantages for 
improving it. My gratitude for your kindness will I trust be lasting; and 
never disappoint that kindness by neglecting or relinquishing its object. 
May He, whose cause you wish to promote, amply reward you ! and may 
all who thus experience your generous assistance reflect honor on the insti¬ 
tution and on you. Quitting the seminary without any determinate 
prospects, I humbly await that train of futurity through which superior 
wisdom may conduct me, firmly resolved, at the same time, that every 
scene into which I may be introduced, shall witness me actively alive in 
the cause of religion and of God. 

I am, honored gentlemen, with grateful respect. 

Your obliged and humble servant, 

J. Foster. 





22 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CHAPTER II. 


NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE-IRELAND-RETURN TO YORKSHIRE. 

1792—179G. 

After leaving Bristol, the first place in which Mr. Foster regu 
larly engaged as a preacher was Newcastle-on-Tyne.* An ancient 
room in this town, situated at tlie top of a flight of steps called 
Tuthill Stairs, and formerly used as the Mayor’s Chapel, had been 
occupied by a Baptist congregation ever since the year 1725. It 
was capable of holding scarcely more than a hundred persons, and 
both before and during Foster’s stay the average attendance was 
much below this number. Yet, in so small an auditory, there 
were a few individuals capable of appreciating the merits of the 
preacher, and who took a very gratifying interest in his discourses. 
“ I have involuntarily caught a habit,” he tells his friend Mr. 
Horsfall, “ of looking too much on the right hand side of the meet¬ 
ing. ’Tis on account of about half-a-dozen sensible fellows who 
sit together there. I cannot keep myself from looking at them. 
I sometimes almost forget that I have any other auditors. They 
have so many significant looks, pay such a particular and minute 
attention, and so instantaneously catch anything curious, that they 
become a kind of mirror in which the preacher may see himself. 
Sometimes, whether you will believe it or not, I say humorous 
things. Some of these men instantly perceive it, and smile ; I, 
observing, am almost betrayed into a smile myself !”f 

Mr. Foster remained at Newcastle little more than three months; 

* His immediate predecessor was the late Rev. Joseph Kinghorne, of 
Norwich, who, in his denomination, was inferior only to Dr. Gill in an 
intimate acquaintance with Rabbinical literature. The results of his 
studies were known to the public chiefly by a new edition of professor 
James Robertson’s “ Clavis Pentateuchi” and a sermon preached before 
the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, on “ The Miracles of Jesus 
not performed by the power of the Shemhamphorash.” 

t The only survivor of this little group, J. L, Angas, Esq., has a vivid 
recollection of the breathless attention with which they listened to Mr. 
Foster’s discourses. One sermon especially, on “This is not your rest,’’ 
made an indelible impression on his mind. 


NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. 


23 


he arrived August 5,1792, and left towards the close of November. 
According to his own account, his mode of life during this period 
was almost that of a recluse ; his mental habits were undisciplined, 
his application to study fitful and desultory, and his purpose as to 
the specific employment of his future life unfixed. “ I am think¬ 
ing,” he writes to his friend, who was then a student at Brearley, 
“ how different is the state of the family in which you reside from 
that where my lot is fixed for the present. Your family seems a 
kind of ludicro-moral museum, comprising specimens of all the 
odd productions found in the world of men. Now observe the 
contrast. Mrs. F. is, with one of the servants, gone some time 
since to London, and the whole mansion is now left to Mr. F., one 
maid, and myself. Mr. F. was bit by the mastiff that guards the 
factory, so severely that he has been confined to the house, and at 
present does not even quit his bed-chamber. Now, then, I abso¬ 
lutely breakfast, dine, drink tea, and sup alone ; except that beside 
my table places himself Pero, a large and very generous dog, my 
most devoted friend, and the willing companion of all my adven¬ 
tures. Flaving, you know, neither spouse nor children, I fre¬ 
quently amuse myself with Pero. I am mistaken, or the name 
of Pero shall live when your coxcombs, your consequential block- 
'heads, and your .... images of fattened clay are heard of no 
more. Though the town is only about two or three hundred yards 
from the house, I never take any notice of it, and very rarely 
enter it, but on the Sunday. I often walk into the fields, where 
I contemplate horses and cows, and birds and grass; or along the 
river, where I observe the motions of the tide, the effect of the 
wind, or, if ’tis evening, the moon and stars reflected in the water. 
When inclined to read, I am amply furnished with books. When 
I am in the habit of musing, I can shut myself in my solitary 
chamber, and walk over the floor, throw myself in a chair, or re¬ 
cline on my table; or if I would dream, I can extend myself on 
the bed. When the day is fled, I lie down in the bosom of night, 
and sleep soundly till another arrives; then I awake, solitary, 
still, I either rise to look at my watch, and then lay myself 
awhile on the bed looking at the morning skies, or .... in a 
magic reverie behold the varied scenes of life, and poise myself 
on the wings of visionary contemplation over the shaded regions 
of futurity .... Such, my friend, are the situation and the 
train in which I pass life away.” At'another time, in a tone of 
deeper sentiment, he thus expresses himself: sometimes feel 


24 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the review of the past very interesting. The vicissitudes which 
my views and feelings have undergone have been numerous and 
great. They have never remained long stationary, and they 
were perhaps never in a more uncertain and fluctuating state than 
at present. I feel conscious of possessing great powers, but not 
happily combined, nor fully brought forth. Some habits of the 
most unfortunate and dangerous kind have taken root, and will 
not be exterminated, I am afraid, without great difficulty.* At 
the age of twenty.two, I feel that I have still to begin to live ; I 
have yet in a great measure my principles to fix, my plans to 
form, my means to select, and habits of exertion to acquire ; a 
Herculean labor, how shall I accomplish it?” In another letter 
of a later date, he says, “ How dark is futurity still! how uncer¬ 
tain and limited our prospects ! I wonder what or where my next 
undertaking will be ! I am apprehensive it will not be in the line 
of preaching; but I leave it to that futurity where it dwells, and 
whence no conjectures can invite it.” 

From Newcastle Mr. Foster returned to his friends in York¬ 
shire, but left them again in the beginning of the year 1793, 
having been invited to preach to a Baptist society meeting in 
Swift’s Alley, Dublin. Nearly all that is known of the events 
of his life during the three following'years is contained in one 
of his letters to Mr. Hughes, dated October 17, 1796. The in- 
troductory sentences are too characteristic to be omitted. “ Your 
letter surprised me,” he says, “ into a pleasure strong enough to 
survive a struggle with the guilty consciousness of neglect. My 
silence appears strange even to myself; and I know not whether 
it will be rendered less so to you, while I observe, that in our last 
personal intercourse, I felt the oppression of a mortifying inferi¬ 
ority and awkwardness, which after several months, during which 
I intended to write, grew into a kind of determination to become 
unknown till I should be quite worthy to be known. Meanwhile, 
1 have always retained the fixed resolve of offering, at a better 
period, an atonement, in a more meritorious friendship; I have 
eagerly seized every opportunity of obtaining information con¬ 
cerning you; and assure you, from a heart that has not yet 
learned insincerity from the world, that my regard for you has 

* To prevent any misapprehension of the strong language here employed 
by so rigid and conscientious a seif-observer, it may be remarked, that on 
comparing it with other passages in the correspondence, it is evident Foster 
alludes to what he elsewhere terms, “ the inveterate, most unfortunate 
habits of indolent, desultory, musing vagrancy.” 


IRELAND. 


25 


\ 

suffered no diminution. It is among my most flattering anticipa¬ 
tions that I shall yet again find myself ‘ in the same room with 
you and Mrs. FI.,’ to taste (may I hope with even superior zest?) 
enjoyments something like those which are gone.” .... 

“ In Ireland,” he proceeds to inform his friend, “ I preached 
little more than a year, one month of which was passed most de¬ 
lightfully at Cork. Nothing can be imagined less interesting than 
the Baptist society in Dublin. The congregation was very small 
when I commenced, and almost nothing when I voluntarily closed. 
A dull scene it was, in which I preached with but little interest, 
and they heard with less. The churcli, of which, with a very 
few regular or casual hearers besides, the whole congregation 
consisted, was, composed of a rich family or two, quite people of 
the world—of three or four families in business, emulating the 
show and consequence of the others—of half a dozen poor indi¬ 
viduals, so little connected with their Christian superiors, and so 
little regarded by them, that between them was ‘ a Gadibus ad 
Gangem ’—and an independent character or two, tired and ashamed 
of such a society. With such an assemblage the soul of Foster 
was not formed to coalesce, and my connexions were fewer than 
could be supposed possible to a public person. 

“ I sought, and partly found, a compensation among the girls 
of a charity-school, connected with the meeting, to whom I talk&l 
with familiar gaiety, gave rewards of learning, and read many 
amusing books ;* in solitary rambles, books, newspapers, con¬ 
verse with the few who were friends, the greater part of them 
not of the church ; and in speculating on the varieties of a me¬ 
tropolis. 

“ I did not distinguish myself by any considerable violation of 
the parsonic garb; . . . . but my contempt of ecclesiastical 
formalities was avowed and apparent on all occasions; and my 
acquaintance did not involve a single man of cloth in the city. 
After an interval of several months spent in Yorkshire, I returned 
to Dublin to make an experiment on a classical and mathematical 
school, which had been left to decline to nothing but the room and 

* “ His habits were very simple; he was fond of walking, and evidently, 
while he paced round our little garden, his mind was full of some subject 
of deep interest. I also know, that the children of an orphan school con¬ 
nected with the place of worship in which he officiated had much of his 
care, and he went daily to read to the children instructive and amusing 
books, and seemed most solicitous to improve their minds, and to cheer 
them in the midst of their dull routine .”—Extract of a Letter from J 
Purser, Esq., of Rathmines. 


26 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


forms, by a very respectable Quaker of my acquaintance, now or 
lately in London, The success did not encourage me to prose¬ 
cute it more than eight or nine months. I remained in Dublin 
several months after its relinquishment. I attended as a hearer 
in Swift’s Alley when there was service, but had little more con¬ 
nexion with the people than if I had never seen them before. . . 
I think the last letter I received predicted the extinction of the 
society.* 

“ During this latter residence in Dublin, my connection with 
violent democrats, and my share in forming a society under the 
denomination of ‘ Sons of Brutus,’ exposed me at one period to 
the imminent danger, or at least the expectation, of chains and a 
dungeon. 

“ I have in Ireland three or four cordial friends, for whose sake 
I shall be pleased with any future opportunity of revisiting it. I 
have now been here more than half a year. If you should ask. 
How employed ? I can scarcely tell; a little in business, I might 
say, in which my brother is engaged ; but oftener in literature, 
or rather its environs. I long since indulged the design of some 
time writing for publication; I am lately come into it more deci¬ 
sively. After fluctuating among various subjects and forms of 
writing, I have drawn the plan of a kind of moral essay, and com¬ 
posed an inconsiderable part; but my intolerable tardiness in 
writing, together with the constitutional indolence which I have 
not yet overcome, threatens long to protract the accomplishment ; 
and my dissatisfaction with what I produce, precludes that enthu¬ 
siasm which is said to be necessary to excellence. However, I 
am resolved on a complete experiment. 

“ Some months since, I formed the project of attempting at 
Leeds, where my occasional sermons have found some admirers, 
a course of lectures on moral and literary subjects, in a mode 
somewhat similar to Thelwall’s, but it was not encouraged into 
execution. I had conceived the plan, too, of a train of discourses, 
different from sermons only in being without texts, on moral and 
religious subjects, addressed entirely to young people, to be pub¬ 
licly delivered each Sunday evening, in the meeting where I 
attend. There could be no interest but that of benevolence here. 
I intended my utmost efforts to simplify, illustrate, and persuade, 
by every expedient in the power of a mind possessed of a measure 

* This prediction has not been fulfilled. The congregation has continued 
and a new chapel, in a more commodious site, has been lately built. 


IRELAND. 


27 


both of amplitude and originality. But Mr.-, a very good 

and sensible, but a timid man, tenacious of modes and notions 
which the church and time have sanctioned, and dreading the 
profane and ill-omened flight of philosophy and fancy athwart the 
good old way, as peasants turn back in dismay at the sight of three 
magpies crossing their road, durst not admit such a measure, ‘ for 
it would not be preaching the gospel!’ So now% you ought to 
applaud my activity in forming plans, and my philosophy in bear¬ 
ing their disappointment. 

“ It is now a great while since I changed, very properly, the 
cleric habit for a second edition of tail and colored clothes, and in 
this guise I have preached at several places since I returned to 
England; but I have not preached at all lately. Yet, after all, 
I extremely regret that I am not employed in preaching. When I 
contemplate the infinite value of religion, the melancholy darkness 
of human minds (especially while I view the interesting counte¬ 
nances of young people, on whom alone, perhaps, any good can 
be operated), I am forcibly admonished that a man like me should 
be something else amidst the assemblies of Sunday than what I 
am,—a very inattentive hearer. But what should I do ? It is 
vain to wish what would exactly gratify me—the power of build¬ 
ing a meeting of my own, and, without being controlled by any 
man, and without even the existence of what is called a church, 
of preaching gratis to all tliat chose to hear. 

“ That denomination of people in W'hich I have been conversant, 
have stronger causes of exception than the color of a waistcoat;— 
my opinions have suffered some alterations. I have discarded, 
for instance, the doctrine of eternal punishments ; I can avow no 
opinion on the peculiar points of Calvinism, for I have none, nor 
see the possibility of forming a satisfactory one. I am no Soci- 
nian; but I am in doubt betw^een the orthodox and Arian doc¬ 
trines, not without some inclination to the latter. It is a subject 
for deliberate, perhaps long, investigation ; and I feel a sincerity 
which assures me that the issue, whatever it may be, must be 
safe. In this state of thoughts and feelings, I have just w^ritten 
to Mr. David, of Frome, requesting to be informed whether there 
be, within his sphere of acquaintance, an Ariah congregation in 
want of a preacher, expressing to him, however, that ‘ my prefer 
ence of such a congregation does not arise from a conclusive coin, 
cidence of opinion, but from a conviction that there only I can 
find the candor and scope which I desire.’ But I am vexed to 



28 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


find this tedious detail has precluded me from subjects more inter¬ 
esting and moi’e mutual.I felt a propensity to smile at 

your confession of the wane of the sentimental fire, till checked 
by a most mournful consciousness of something similar in myself. 
Indeed, indeed, it is too soon.When sometimes apprehen¬ 

sive that fate means to deny me the sweet ambling circle of love 
and domestic felicity, I almost resolve to assume the stalk sublime 
of the hero adventuring to carry humanity amidst savage nature 

in some distant clime.My mother is not greatly altered 

from what she was some years back ; but my father is rapidly 
declining, by a painful course, to the grave. If I were not too 
proud to solicit what I do not deserve, I should breathe a warm, a 
very warm wish, to hear from you soon again. The first step of 
generosity is probably the easiest. Give me a detail at least as 
copious as the example furnished in this. Bristol has lost the 
interest it held in my mind, by the successive defection of all I 

most esteemed there.If you know any congregation, of 

the description hinted above, in want of a preacher, I shall take it 
as kind if you will just mention it.” 

While at Dublin, Mr. Foster resided with the late John Purser, 
Esq., and endeared himself to all the inmates, especially to the 
young people and the domestics. He often read to the family in 
the evening; generally works of fiction. Mrs. Radcliff was a 
very great favorite, and the translations of Schiller. The impres¬ 
sion he gave of himself to one of his young companions was that 
of “ a condescending friend who was desirous of putting their 
mental machinery in motion.” At Cork, though his stay was 
short, he was much admired, and his abilities were more highly 
estimated than at Dublin. 

The' following ^‘Journal of three days,” originally written at 
Dublin in 1793, but transcribed by Foster in 1796, when he con- 
signed many papers of former years to the flames, will be read 
with interest, as a record of his interior sentiments: 

Dec. 6, 1793. Reason, dignity, approaching death, concur in the 
solemn command, “ Delay no longer!” I obey, and my soul shall sleep 
no more. Can time a month hence be more valuable than time now 1 
or if it should, will the time that shall end the month, be the same that 
now passes in the beginning of it ? Why then should any of the mo¬ 
ments, which are all beyond price, be lost ? Let them be lost no longer. 
Passing and insignificant are the circumstances of exterior life. The 
man that seeks the object and the felicity of human life only in eating, 





JOURNAL. 


29 


drinking, sleeping, dressing, traffic, walking, resting, had better never 
have been born. But the internal life, the life of the immortal spirit, is 
all-important. Who would not wish to raise it to the loftiest pitch of 
improvement and felicity ? I feel myself entrusted with the education 
of my mind; and attention cannot be too solicitous. ’Tis determined to 
stimulate, to guide, to watch, its operations. The object is, to acquire 
habits of thinking, observation, devotion, and converse. It will be useful 
to record the degree of success; at least make an experiment of one 
month. 

Well, the day is gone. Though it has not done much, it has given 
proof that much may be done. The world of possible improvements is 
truly boundless. When I look over the immense plain of nature and 
man, and see so many thousand objects capable of suggesting new and 
interesting trains of thought—so many tracks which spirits unembodied 
seem alone to have trod, how I pity those who are content to confine 
themselves exclusively to the stupid bustle of business, or who, anxious 
for intellectual pleasure and wealth, seek them only in the tedious dull¬ 
ness of common-place writers. But the day has gone, and it has not 
extinguished my hopes, though it has but imperfectly realized my plan. 
1 rose before eight, dressed, and went out to walk. The walk pleasing, 
though not fertile of sentiment or reflection. How great still the diffi¬ 
culty of fixiTig attention. I noticed drops of rain falling on a sheet of 
water. They have but the most transient eflTect on the water; they 
make a very slight impression of the moment, and then can be discerned 
no more. But observe these drops of rain falling on a meadow or gar¬ 
den ; here they have an effect to heighten every color, and feed every 
growth. Is not this the difference between the mind which the infinitude 
of sentiments and objects in this great world can never interest or alter, 
and that mind which feels the impression, and enriches itself with the 
value of them all ? Those things are among the first rights of man, which 
all men absolutely need ; a.sfood. Men assert the right to eat with the 
greatest constancy, and if opposed, with the utmost vehemence. Perhaps 
nothing so often raises quarrels among children. In every age men have 
been ingenious, industrious, or knavish, in order to eat. Frequently, 
too, for this they have been cruel, and often they have fought. As life 
cannot be sustained without eating, most men would risk even life, in 
order to obtain meat, when it cannot be gained without difficulty or dan¬ 
ger. Some men, like certain dogs, see the approaching opportunity of 
mischief with an equivocal and frightful expression in their counte¬ 
nances, produced by the mingling feelings of pleasure and malignity. 
Art can sometimes give to the looks of deadly hatred a certain tinge of 
blandishment, which empowers them to fascinate while they alarm. 
They terrify while they allure, and yet allure while they terrify. Some 
serpents have the power by their eyes of charming birds, mice, &:c., into 
their mouths. I have observed that men of business who pass their 
lives in the town, when they incidentally meet one another, or their other 


30 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


acquaintance, wear an air that looks like notice without attention. They 
see a person as they see a post, without the slightest feeling of concern, 
without any movement of mind that acknowledges an interest in his ex¬ 
istence, or his case. 

1 walked and observed the pensive, most interesting remains of the 
departing Autumn ; noticed the singing of birds, a distant landscape, and 
miserable-looking men at work ; returned, employed my mind on various 
subjects and fancies, without result, and made several attempts to study 
letters, without success; read nothing but newspapers. In the evening 
from seven o’clock till between eight and nine, at the prayer-meeting in 
Swift’s Alley; from that time till between eleven and twelve, on a visit; 
most of the company very insipid; took no part in the conversation, 
which, however, was plentiful, but was much amused with observation. 
But, indeed, is it right to be amused with the folly of beings who ought 

to be wise ? One part of the circle was composed of ladies.I 

listened to their chat.But though full of transitions, it was so 

rapid and incessant, that philosophic observation was somewhat baffled. 
.... I think I heard not one sentiment. There was a long dispute 
whether a particular house in the town had a door on a certain side. I 
contemplated with a degree of wonder. I thought. Have you no ideas 
about realities and beings that are unseen ? about the eternal Governor, 
and a future state ? Is this all you find in life, and all by which you 
fortify yourselves against death ? I wish I could have formed a clear 
conception of the situation of their minds,—that I could be privy to their 
serious reflections, if they ever have such, or if not, discover how they 
escape them. The gentlemen talked on forgery, trials, criminals, in¬ 
stances of murder, extent of the laws, priests, and the war. The most 
awful of names was sometimes taken in vain. The company was less 
at supper. The talk turned on harvests, salmon, the cunning and 
familiarity of dogs, goats, tame deer, &c. There was a disagreeable 
country gentleman there. No urbanity in his manners; his address 
blunt and abrupt; his visage hard, and unmodified by sentiment, as if 

it were carved on wood.He talked much, and told trifling stories. 

He said that in the spring months he had seen wheat growing in the 
woolly backs of sheep, and shooting up green. These sheep had been 
sometimes in the threshing-floor, where the corn probably got into their 
fleeces. Came home and closed the day. 

Dec, 7. Saturday night; must I exclaim “ Diem perdidi Whether 
I have lost this or not, I believe I have not saved so many as the man 
who uttered that regretful sentiment. I rose somewhat earlier than 
usual. With conscious pain I neglected prayer till late in the day,— 
late indeed ! Did not walk all the day; passed most of it in a mix¬ 
ture of listless, fancies and painful reflections. Another unsuccess¬ 
ful attempt at epistolary writing. Surely my mind is declining into 
absolute sterility. Toward evening read over again part of Dr. Moore’s 
“ Journal of a Residence in France.” Have lately seen elegant por- 




JOURNAL. 


31 


traits of some of the great Conventionists, and still fall asleep and awake 
with their images and their names on my fancy. Wish to emulate them 

in some important respects.Adjusted some of the exteriors for 

to-morrow. But what has become of the most important part ? I hope 
the last great day will have better days than this to disclose, in the ac¬ 
count of my life ! 

Dec. 8. Sunday night. I hold in recollection the first sensation that 
I felt on awaking (about seven o’clock), and I see something guilty 
connected with it. It quickly struck me, “ I have to preach to-day 
and the thought was unpleasing. It ought not to be thus. In part the 
reason was, I suppose, that I had not yet begun to form either of my 
sermons. I sat up in bed a\y}iile, and caught some very considerable 
ideas. Ascended the pulpit at the usual time. My text, “ And Pilate 


said. What is truth ?” My mind fertile and expansive.After it, 

went to see a respectable friend confined at home.Had just an • 


hour to study my afternoon sermon. It was tolerably sensible and perti¬ 
nent, but tame. In the morning I was on wings ; this afternoon, only 
walked- Some of the sentiments, however, had the merit of being pro¬ 
per, without being common (Matt. v. 8). At seven o’clock heard a 
sensible sermon from young Feltus. Took particular notice of the small 
drops on the damp wall, each of which collected a few oblique rays into 
a focus. Feel a disposition to continue a preacher, and to excel .... 

Foster returned once more to Yorkshire, in P'ebruary, 1796, 
where he continued till his removal to Chichaster. 





LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


a2 


LETTERS. 


X. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

jy'ewcastle, Sept. 20 , 1792 . 

.... What an insipid thing this world of mankind is ! How few 
we find wliom we can at all wish to make one’s intimate, inseparable 
friends ! How trifling, too, are the efforts and productions of the human 
mind ! I often wonder how it happens that my own mind, or any other 
mind, cannot any moment blaze with ideas superior to the most admira¬ 
ble of Young or Shakspeare. The whole system of human attainments, 
pleasures, and designs, sometimes strikes me as a confused mass of 
inanity. Almost everything carries some glaring mark of deficiency or 
meanness. Ought not love, for instance, in order to deserve any regard, 
to be equal for a perpetuity, to the inexpressible delight of some peculi¬ 
arly auspicious moments, which return perhaps seldom in a person’s life ; 
and though they entrance the heart, wound, by instantly quitting it. . . 
. . My friend, I believe we must tread a little longer the dull round ; the 
day will come that is destined to set our souls at large. Happy that the 
soul possesses one power—Immortality; which, though it seems at pre¬ 
sent to slumber in the breast, will at last awake in full vigor, and take 
vengeance on this dull life, by bursting in a moment the hated chains 
that bind us to it. The day is short and wintry, but yet let it be im¬ 
proved. Let us take all its advantages before us, and we shall not re¬ 
gret the desert we thus leave barren behind; nor shall we dread to see 
the close approaching. . . . 


XI. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

N ewcastle, Oct. 2 , 1702 . 

.... You are now, I believe, in the last of your three years. [ sup¬ 
pose you sometimes think of prospects ; and probably you liave not often 
very clear ones. We must be both flung into the world, and perhaps 
very sufficiently tossed about. I often wonder where or how we shall 
in the event settle and rest. But let religion be the leading principle, 
and leave the rest, not to fate, but to God. I am totally unable to give 
you any satisfactory account of myself, or my present situation. I am 
one of those who can make themselves tolerably easy everywhere. I am 
well-treated, and have every accommodation that can be wished. But 



LETTERS. 


33 


you will say, this is not the thing; and I acknowledge it. Prosperity in 
religion, and public usefulness, are objects incomparably more important 
than simply personal conveniences, and circumstantial advantages. I 
seem nearly at a stand with respect to the adjustment of plans for futur¬ 
ity. Whether I am to be a preacher or not, I cannot tell. I do preach, 
however, sometimes with great fertility, sometimes with extreme barren¬ 
ness of mind; insomuch that I am persuaded that no man hearing me 
in the different extremes, could, from my preaching, imagine it was the 
same speaker. I never write a line or a word of my sermons. There 
are some advantages, both with respect to liberty and appearance, at¬ 
tendant on a perfect superiority to notes. Sunday evening (a very wet, 
uncomfortable night) I preached to about eighteen or twenty auditors, 
the greatest sermon I ever made. It was from Rev. x., 5, 6, “ And the 
angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth, lifted up his 
hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, &c., 
that there should be time no longer.” I always know when I speak 
well or the contrary.The subject was grand; and my imagina¬ 

tion was in its most luminous habit. I am entirely uncertain whether 
the people will wish me to stay any longer than the three months. I 
have no reason to think they much desire it. The world is still a wide 
place, my friend. 


XII. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

JVewcastley Oct. 2, 1792. 

.... By this time I suppose your woods, and fields, and gardens, 
have nearly lost their charms. Such scenes are just becoming dreary ; 
and I conjecture that your walks, whether solitary or with Mr. J. or G., 
are but short, or but few. The birds are assembled in flocks, and the 
trees are changing their color. Now you can moralize. You and I 
shall very soon experience a withering, languishing decline; and like 
nature around us, we too shall die. And surely with future prospects 
clear, it must be the highest felicity to quit this oppressed and clouded 
‘existence, and be transported into light and endless pleasures. 

“ Through what new scenes and changes must we pass! 

The wide, th’ unbounded prospect lies before me, 

But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest,upon it ” 

Is the cell on the other side the orchard in a state as desolate and 
ruinous as it was when I saw it last ? What a number of hours I have 
spent there ! sometimes praying, sometimes attempting to study sermons, 
which at that period I felt a task of very great difficulty indeed. And 
many hours I have spent there in reveries, literary projects, calculations 
of improvement in a given future time, mortifying contrasts of the actual 





34 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


and possible improvement of time and advantages. My conduct to this 
moment has by no means realized the designs and hopes with which my 
breast has often glowed in that humble, but favorite mansion. The 
emotions of religion, of something like mental greatness, and of love, 
nave alternately inspired and perplexed my bosom in that pensive recess, 
which is now, perhaps, left to those mysterious beings, who, like him 
that haunted it before, are peculiarly attached to a dark and melancholy 

solitude.At some moments life, the world, mankind, religion, 

and eternity, appear to me like one vast scene of tremendous confusion, 
stretching before me far away, and closed in shades of the most awful 
darkness ;—a darkness which only the most powerful splendors of Deity 
can illumine, and which appears as if they never yet had illumined it. 
But still, life and the world were made for man ; and I, as a man, am 
designing to try what they are, what they can yield, and to what great, 
important purpose they may be rendered subservient. Let us awake, 
my friend, and look around us, and ask ourselves. Whence we are com¬ 
ing, and whither we are going; and then each of us address himself, 
“ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Let us 
survey the sphere in which we have to move, and inquire how far our 
efforts and our influence may be extended. I think we shall come at 
the point at last. We shall learn what is truth, what is duty, and what 
is happiness ; and where the gracious assistance is to be obtained by 
which we shall be empowered to understand the one, and perform the 
other, and attain and enjoy the third. I have entirely lost myself; but I 
believe I am writing to H. Horsfall, and I hope two sheets will convince 
him that I am his friend, and that I wish him to be wise, and useful, and 
estimable. 


XIII. TO BIR. H. HORSFALL. 

JVewcastle, Oct. 2, 1792. 

.... A correspondent of genius and observation might give you an 
amusing account of Newcastle ; but such qualifications are but in a 
small degree mine. The town is an immense, irregular mass of houses. 
There are a few fine uniform streets ; but the greater number exhibit an 
awkward succession of handsome and wretched buildings. The lower 
part of the town, as being in the bottom of a valley, is dirty in an odious 
degree. It contains thousands of wretched beings, not one of whom 

can be beheld without pity or disgust.The general characteristic 

of the inhabitants seems to be a certain roughness, expressive at once 

of ignorance and insensibility.I know little of the dissenters in 

general. I was one evening lately a good deal amused at the Presbyte¬ 
rian or Scotch meeting, by the stupidity of their psalms—the grimace 
of the clerk—the perfect insignificance of the parson—and the silly, un- 






v,^TTERS. 


, 35 

raeaning attention v. * n numerous auditory.But our meeting for 

amplitude and elegance 1 I believe you never saw its equal. It is, to 
be sure, considerably larger than your lower school; but then so black, 
and so dark !* It looks just like a conjuring-room, and accordingly the 
cf'iling is all covered with curious, antique figures to aid the magic. 
That thing which they call the pulpit is as black as a chimney ; and, 
indeed, there is a chimney-piece, and very large old fire-case behind it. 
There is nothing by which the door of this same pulpit can be fastened, 
so that it remains partly open, as if to invite some good person or other 
to assist you when you are in straits. My friend Pero, whom I have 
mentioned before, did me the honor one Sunday to attempt to enter; but, 
from some prudential notion, I suppose, I signified my will to the con¬ 
trary by pulling-to the door, and he very modestly retired. Yet I like 
this pulpit mightily ; ’tis so much the reverse of that odious, priestly 
pomp which insults your eyes in many places. I hate priestly conse¬ 
quence and ecclesiastical formalities. When I order a new coat I be¬ 
lieve it will not be black. In such a place as this it would be unnatural 
to speak loud, and consequently there cannot be a great degree of exte¬ 
rior animation. I believe my manner is always cool; this is not so 
happy, I confess; but it is nature, and all nature’s opponents will be van¬ 
quished.Paper fails—so here then concludes our letter; and ] 

remain, much at your service. 

The Knight or the Enchanted Pen. 


XIV. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

JVewcastle, Oct, 4, 1792. 

.... If I were with you, I should set you an example of temper¬ 
ance, which you will find it a piece of self-denial to imitate. “ He that 
needs least is likest the gods,” said Socrates, you know; and I have 
only to wish that Socrates were now alive, to be convinced it is possible 
for others to carry philosophy as far as himself. If Socrates and I, and 
the Delphic oracle, had flourished all at the same time, would not the 
last have made a difficulty which of the two should be pronounced the 
wisest of men ? or, at least, should not I have come in for the second 
place, if superior age and experience had at last given one step of pre¬ 
cedence to my brother sage ? 

So far I had written on Thursday last, when the genius-enchanter 
who has of late presided over my pen, and who sometimes inspirits it 
with fancy, and sometimes loads and trammels it with dulness, struck it 

* The sombre appearance was owing, in part, to the old oak wainscot¬ 
ing ; the pulpit also was of the same material. At one end of the room, 
the figures “ 1485 ” rudely carved, probably marked the date of its erec 
tion. 





36 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


with such a cold and deadly charm that I could write no farther. ’Tis 
now Monday—and I have heard nothing from you or from Brearley. 
You are, to be sure, the most niggardly class of correspondents that ever 
lived; but as I love to assert independence, I will show that I can write 
whether you do or not. Odd fellows that you are—perhaps when I see 
you again, you will not speak neither. But I promise you I will make 
up your deficiencies ; when I open my mouth in earnest, I assure you 
none of you bachelors shall be able to close it. I’ll trumpet your cha¬ 
racters with a vengeance! You shall hear how eloquently, and how 
sarcastically too, I can inveigh against stupidity, and insensibility, and 
unmeaning gravity, and important reserve, and all your ridiculous cha¬ 
racteristics. Depend on it, I shall spread your xiriues to the sun, and 
constrain even yourselves to behold them. I am always glad when I can 
catch a subject to talk about, and fortunately, in this respect, I shall be 
at no loss the next time I see you. Every trait of the face, every mo¬ 
tion of the lips, every oddity in dress, and every word you pronounce, 
will afford me some curious thought; and thus I shall be able to tease 
you on every side with incessant remarks, some of which you shall not 
be able to understand, and others you will not like. Such treatment 
faithless and idle correspondents always deserve, and such politeness 

they shall always find me fairly disposed to exhibit.Last week 

Mr. Fishwick and I rode to Tynemouth. We had two most noble 
horses, which carried us about nine miles an hour. I could boast of 
having nearly “ drawn empyreal air,” since sometimes in the course of 
the ride I had almost got above this atmosphere of ours. You would 
have been highly pleased with the grand view of the sea which I that 
day enjoyed.Hearing nothing from you, I am entirely left to in¬ 

dulge my conjectures. I may continue to wonder whether you are alive 
or dead ; whether you are tracing the paths of learning forward or back¬ 
ward ; whether you are asleep or awake; whether you are married or 
free ; whether you remember me or have forgotten me ; whether you 
wish any more letters, or you had rather see a ghost; in short, whether 
you are the same man I once knew and esteemed, or, as H. Horsfall, 
you exist no more. ‘ 

A fine young man, the son of Mr. Whitfield the Baptist preacher, of 
whom you have heard, has just been with me here in my chamber for a 
long time, and a most agreeable evening we have passed. He is a youth 
about twenty, of worthy principles and character, and of an ingenuous, 
sensible, and affectionate spirit. He has been recounting to me the 
scenes of past life, and pensively recalling several tender affairs. On 
the ^abject of the uncertainty of future prospects, our feelings seem very 

similar.My quarter of a year will soon be finished ; I know not 

what will be the result—I know not what I wish to be the result. 




LETTERS. 


37 


XV. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

A^ewcastle, Oct. 10, 1792. 

No letter from Mr. Horsfall: I am left, therefore, to proceed without 
interruption. ’Tis true I have nothing of consequence to say; but there 
are some people to whom it is all the same whether one talk like a man 
of sense or a fool. They can hear a parson showing away in powder 
and rufiles—the quack doctor haranguing on diseases and pills—the 
veteran “ shouldering his crutch, and telling how fields are won ”—the 
barber edging his razor with his jests—the young lady giving new in¬ 
terest to a tender subject by the remarks which her feelings prompt— 
and the old wench telling a story of weddings and of witches,—all with 
the same undisturbed tranquillity and dulness. Virtue may triumph, or 
wickedness blaspheme; distress may supplicate and weep; injured in¬ 
nocence may remonstrate ; industry may reprove, or gratitude m:iy 
bless ; the philosopher may reason, and the idiot may rave;—what is it 
all to them ? The curious and the novel cannot seize attention; the 
grand finds no upper story above the kitchen-apartments of their minds; 
the tender cannot awaken torpid sensibility; and the pathetic rebounds 
a league from their shielded hearts. All that I mean by this bustling 
page is, that there are some to whom it signifies nothing whether one 
write or speak sense or nonsense. Mind, I do not say that you are one 
of them. I only mean to say, that idle, inattentive correspondents de¬ 
serve to be punished twice a week with a nonsensical discourse on non¬ 
sense. 

I have just received a-most pleasing letter from Mr. Hughes. He is 
still unmarried, and still the only tutor of the Academy. He flatters me 
by telling me that he feels the loss of me. I still admire him as much 
as ever. Each letter I have received from him indicates that energy of 
mind which genius alone can inspire. I shall to the end of life congra¬ 
tulate myself on having become acquainted with him. If I have attained 
any enlargement of ideas, I am in a very great degree indebted to him 

for the advantage. I should be most happy to see him again.Do 

you read novels still ? I sometimes think I will read no more; so many 
of them are romantic, and so many insipid. Besides, is there any such 
thing as learning the art or the science of feeling ? I think the person 
who, without reading novels, would not be amiable and worthy, will 
never become such by reading them. I am too little in the habit of read¬ 
ing anything; I must reform my plan. 

You recollect the waving motion I used to have in reading or studying. 
I have it still, and I find it very injurious to my breast, but I know not 
how to get quit of it. I am anxious to be free from every disagreeable 
habit. How desirable a thing it is to be unexceptionable in all points. 
1 hope it will not be long before I see you. The wintry season, I am 
afraid, will prevent the repetition of the midnight ramble. Really it was 


38 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


a pleasant adventure to me.But at any rate we will conjure up 

a little gaiety, I hope. 


XVI. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

JVewcastle, J\'ov. 9, 1792. 

.... I think I used, when at Brearley, to express a degree of aver¬ 
sion to children; now, on the contrary, I seem to like them much. Yes¬ 
terday evening I passed at the house of one of the most respectable of the 
people here; and spent almost half of the time in playing with two little 
girls. I assisted their pranks, and danced them about. I verily believe 
i should be no contemptible nurse. Lately I received a charming letter 
from Mr. Hughes; and yesterday I despatched for him a whole sheet 
of post paper, written very full and close, and design to follow it with 
another, in a similar style, in a few days. 

From my last to Mr. Fawcett, jun., you have perhaps heard the con¬ 
clusion of the affair of Hull, and my present situation at Newcastle. I 
have nothing in expectation but returning to Yorkshire.I abomi¬ 

nate Hebden-bridge as much as you can do ; but I shall, in case of being 
at Lanes, be near you, and Brearley and Mount—circumstances in the 
highest degree pleasing. Christmas will not be distant in prospect at 
the time I expect to reach you; and then you gentlemen will be at lei¬ 
sure ; and if I am with you, I promise you will find me not the least for¬ 
ward, gay, and mischievous of the posse. What must it be that our wits 
united will not be capable of contriving ? and what contrivance that our 
temerity will not be able to execute ? Mr. G., sagacious and firm; Mr. 

-,‘delicately neutral (to serve as a ballast to our motions); you, 

regular and assiduous ; myself, airy and romantic. Depend upon it the 
world will hear of us. 

.... There is scarcely any enterprise from which, in speculation 
and fancy, I shrink. My object shall be, through life, the greatest good, 
and 1 hold myself, and will ever hold myself, at liberty to seek it in any 
line that appears most promising ; and so to change one line for another, 
when another more advantageous presents itself. Reason dictates not 
the superstitious notion that when you have applied yourself to one en¬ 
gagement, you must at all events adhere to it in life and death. Let the 
great design be conducted onward with ardor, but it may be conducted 
Ihrough various paths. You will tell me, that “ he who has set his hand 
to the plough must not look back.” Well, in this determination your¬ 
self cannot be firmer than I am. There is only one principle on which 
a good and a wise man can act, only one great end to pursue; but let 
not prescription interfere with reason and experiment in selecting the 
means. Preachers, like the poor, we are certain of “ having always 
with usbut characters of a description which I can conceive are seen 







LETTERS. 


39 


so seldom that they appear phenomena. Let prejudice and custom for¬ 
bear to condemn, or know there are spirits that dread not their award. 
Let not the displeasure of Heaven be daiounced on designs which heaven 
will approve. 


XVII. TO MR. H. HORSFALL. 

JSTewcastle, JSTov. 12, 1792. 

What art thou doing, most incorrigible of men ? Once and again 
have I besought thee to write, but thou writest not. Is it that paralytic 
chains have confined thy hand ? Is it that thou sleepest the perpetual 
sleep of Endymion ? Is it that thy evil genius tears in pieces all the 
letters thou writest ? Is it that thy preceptor hath taken away all thy 
pens and ink, that thou mayest be compelled better to mind thy book ? . 

. . . Message after message have not I sent ? but, like that blustering 
Jehu of old, thou saidst to each of my messengers, “ Get thee behind 
me,” nor condescendest to return one word of reply. Unrighteous fellow 
that thou art; thou renderest not to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, 
for know thou that I am a man of high respectableness ; neither reachest 
thou up to the honesty (low as that virtue is) of paying thy lawful debts; 
for but compare the number of letters thou hast received with the num¬ 
ber of those thou hast written, and if thou hast sense to see the differ¬ 
ence, thou wilt confess that I have unanswered claims on thee. What 
dost thou not deserve, thou ungrateful and idle dunce ? .... At night 
let evil dreams be awake, while thou sleepest! strange and grievous in¬ 
deed, the mischances that will vex thy sleeping hour ! when thou fanci¬ 
est thyself in act to utter speech of earnest meaning, in a twink flieth 
thy tongue out of thy head! .... or methinks, when thou imaginest 
thyself sat down to write Cupid’s warm epistle, behold Death, with his 
bony hand, taketh hold of thy fingers, and maketh thee scrawl thy last 
will and testament! But dost thou begin to laugh at me ? O thou 
graceless varlet! Anon, a more sober mood shall take thee. Best I 
should leave thee at present. But Twill give thee a handful of grave 
reflexions, on subjects indifferent, which I have just caught in a cow¬ 
house, a place in which such men as thou are fittest always to dwell. 

Is pleasure willing to keep her assignations with thee, equally in an 
open cow-house and a decorated parlor ? Thou art a happy man. , 

Dost thou behold goodness, though accompanied with vulgarity, witli 
complacence; and baseness, though arrayed in elegance, with disgust? 
Thou art a happy man. 

Dost thou behold inferior talents without vanity, and superior ones 
without envy ? Thou art a happy man. 

While thou art diffusing gay pleasure through thy social circle, and 
receiving pleasure from it, is thy cheerfulness undamped when thou ob- 



40 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


servest Death drawing a chair, and taking a place among the company ? 
Thou art a happy man. 

Dost thou pray, not because thou dreadest curses, but because thou 
hopest blessings ? Thou art a happy man. 

Does not thy retrospect of regret cast a shade over thy prospects of 
hope ? Thou art a happy man. 

Amidst prosperity, canst thou detect the futility of means which may 
have gained thee pleasure ? in misfortune, canst thou triumph in the 
rectitude of those measures of wisdom to which yet success may have 
been denied ? Thou art a happy man. 

Let the windows of thy soul, like the windows of a house, not disclose 
everything within; but, at the same time, admit notices of everything 
without. 

Wiser reflexions than these, if thou choosest, thou mayest make ; if 
thou choosest, thou mayest impart them, too, for my improvement. But 
if thou still thinkest that I am unworthy to be the receptacle of thy 
wisdom, thou must give me leave to fake myself out of thy presence, and 
to shut the door after me, while I am telling thee, that 

I am, thine to chastise thee, 

J. Foster. 


XVIII. TO THE REV. THOMAS LANGDON. 

April 23, 1793. 

... I well know by the same sympathetic feeling what must be your 
sentiments of concern for France. Its situation is indeed alarming. Still 
I cannot but hope that France has a triumph yet to come. I consider 
the tempestuous horror that now overspreads the hemisphere as the 
prelude to a long and effulgent day. It is most consolatory to reflect, 
that religion, like an angel walking among the ranks of guilty men, still 
untainted and pure, retains, amidst all these black and outrageous evils, 
the same benign and celestial spirit, and gives the same independent and 
perpetual pleasures. The happiness of the good seeks not the smile of 
guilty power, nor dreads its frown. Let a Christian philosophy, there¬ 
fore, elevate all our speculations, calm our indignant feelings, and dignify 
all our conduct. 


XIX. TO THE REV. THOMAS LANGDON. 

JVear Hebden-Bridge, March 24, 1796. 

I AM gratified in a persuasion that I am not entirely forgotten at Leeds. 
But I wish I had either less occasion or more ingenuity to make apology 





LETTERS. 


41 


for that long silence which might seem to indicate oblivion, because it 
always accompanies it. The obstinate tendency to delay, and to neglect 
writing, adheres to me still, though attended with a force of regret which 
should long ago have stimulated me to conquer it. I am not here ac¬ 
knowledging, and my heart firmly assures me that I need not acknow 
ledge a want or decline of gratitude and aftection. No. 

1 have been a little more than a year at Dublin. Promise and friend¬ 
ship required me to write to you, yet I certainly had little worth notice 
to communicate. I prosecuted a good while the undertaking on which I 
went thither, but relinquished it at last as insufficient and unpromising. 
I preached not once the whole year. I have been here now something 
more than a month, and am generally very busy about literary schemes. 
I may perhaps some time try the fate of an author. 

1 am informed you have resigned at least half the cleric character, by 
engaging in business. But I am informed, too, that you have now Mrs. 
Langdon at home. This sounds like the marvellous, indeed, but it is told 
on such authority that I am compelled to believe it. She will have the 
kindness to accept my sincere expressions of cordial affection and esteem. 
Little Mary, too; does she yet remember how I frighted her—and, if she 
remembers, can she forgive ? 

I intend in a while to venture on a walk to Leeds, and to make you a 
short sermon some Sunday morning; that is to say, if you will allow me 
to ascend the pulpit, and the people will allow me to remain there; for, 
in faith, my hair is—tied ; and my waistcoat is—red. In the meantime 
I shall feel it very kind if you will favor me with half a sheet, to inform 
me whether you and your little family are well and happy ; whether your 
business is attended with satisfactory success ; whether our very excel¬ 
lent friends at Leeds are in the same circumstances as when I saw them ; 
and whether the political spirit is quite evaporated. I should be very 
happy to be remembered to my friends, but cannot wish to subject you 
to the ceremonious formality of telling them so. 


The sentiments which Foster expresses in the foregoing letters 
on several important subjects were such as he maintained sub¬ 
stantially in after life. The wish he avowed “ to have a chapel 
of his own, without even the existence of what is called a church,” 
was not a transitory ebullition of juvenile sentiment. At a much 
later period, on the occasion of a violent dissension between two 
religious societies, which came under his immediate notice, he 
speaks of “ obtaining plenty of confirmation, if he had needed it, 
of his old opinion, that churches are useless and mischievous in¬ 
stitutions, and the sooner they are dissolved the better.”* The 

* “ I think,” Mr. Hughes replied, “ your conclusion strange. To be 




42 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


general tenor of his language implied a disapproval of any or¬ 
ganized religious community. He believed that there was more 
of appearance than of reality in the union of church-membership j 
and that, at all events, its benefits were greatly overrated. With 
the exception of public worship and the Lord’s supper, he was 
averse to everything institutional in religion. He never ad mi- 
nistered, nor even witnessed in mature life (it is believed), the 
ordinance of baptism, and was known to entertain doubts respect¬ 
ing its perpetuity. In writing to a friend (Sept. 10, 1828) he 
says, “ I have long felt an utter loathing of what bears the gene¬ 
ral denomination of the church, with all its parties, contests, dis¬ 
graces, or honors. My wish would be little less than the disso¬ 
lution of all church institutions, of all orders and shapes ; that 
religion might be set free, as a grand spiritual and moral element, 
no longer clogged, perverted, and prostituted by corporation 
forms and principles.” 

It would probably not be difficult to account for Foster’s laying 
an almost exclusive stress on the personal convictions and spirit¬ 
ual state of the individual, and attaching a very subordinate 
value to the social and outward offices of the church. It was 
not to be expected that he would strongly feel the need of the 
social clement in religion, or seek in its public exercises for com¬ 
panionship and sympathy, when, from constitutional shyness, 
combined with a very discriminating perception of character, and 
a high standard of personal attainment, he sought no such aid in 
other things. It might be anticipated, that (as was the case) his 
piety would be meditative, imaginative, self-enclosed, and in 
reference to his fellow men, self-dependent. The following re- 
marks from his will illustrate this part of his charac¬ 

ter. “ I like all persons as subjects of speculation ; few indeed 
as objects of affection.”* “ I cultivate society for some definite 
purpose ; either, first, for animated interest—affection; or, 

sure, if there were no churches, there would be no ecclesiastical squab¬ 
bles ; and it may be added, if there were no states, there would be no 
civil broils ; and if there were no vegetable productions, there would be 
no deadly night-shade ; and if there were no water, no one would be 
drowned ; and if there were no fire, no one would be consumed ; and if 
there were no victuals, no one would be choked. Church-framers may 
egregiously err ; but when you scout the whole tribe, and all their works, 
tell us how we ought to proceed ; make out a strong case, and say at least 
that the way you would substitute would be free from the objections that 
cling to the old ways, and would secure greater advantages.” 

* No. 529. 


. CHURCH MEMBERSHIP. 


43 


secondly, for utility—beneficent influence, even when 1 do not 
feel sentiment or complacency. For a middle state of feeling 
between these two (the acquaintance feeling) I have no faculty.”* 

“ One is not one’s genuine self; one does not disclose all one’s 
self to tliose with whom one has no intimate sympatliy. One is 
therefore several successive, and apparently different, characters, 
according to the gradation of the faculties and qualities of those 
one associates with. I am like one of those boxes I have seen, 
enclosing several other boxes of similar form, though lessening size. 
The person with whom I have least congeniality sees only the 
outermost; another person has something more interesting in his 
character, he sees the next box ; another sees still an inner one; 
but the friend of my iieart alone, with whom I have a full 
sympathy, sees disclosed the innermost of all. The colors of 
these successive boxes may vary ; my various characters may 
have various aspects, and so the several judgments formed of me 
by different persons may be various, even to contradiction, yet 
each be apparently true.”f 

In the formation of his political opinions, Foster pursued, as 
far as his immediate connexions were concerned, a solitary course. 
His estimable tutor. Dr. Fawcett, had a settled reverence for the 
existing order of things, and a dread of innovation ; while his 
younger friends were of temperaments better fitted to cool down 
ins enthusiasm, than to render it more intense by the addition of 
tlieir own. Perhaps the germ of his anti-aristocratical princi¬ 
ples might have been discovered in the youthful indignation with 
which he reprobated the grasping selfishness of the landowners in 
his neighborhood. He usually finished his invectives by saying, 

“ I would rather starve than receive anything at their hands.” 
The anticipations of a general political amelioration which the 
French Revolution excited in so many ardent and philanthropic 
spirits, made him a decided republican. But though he “ never 
ceased to regard royalty, and all its gaudy paraphernalia, as a 
sad satire on the human race,”t his attachment to republicanism'' 
underwent some modification in the course of years. A deeper 
insight into human nature made him less sanguine of the benefi- 
cial working of any political system ; he looked more to indivi- 

* No. C)73. ■ t No. 607. „ r. 

1 Letter to John Purser, Esq., Feb. 22, 1842. “ Not however,” Mr. F. 
adds, “ that I am a violent republican. No form of government will be 
practically good, as long as the nations to be governed are in a controver¬ 
sy, by their vices and irreligion, with the supreme Governor.” 


44 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


dual efforts—to education in the most comprehensive sense, ana 
to the efficacy of Christian principles in the renovation of man¬ 
kind. “ While the nature of man is corrupt,” he remarks in his 
essay on the Epithet Romantic, “ it will pervert even the very 
schemes and operations by which the world would be improved, 
though their first principles were pure as heaven ; and revolu¬ 
tions, great discoveries, augmented science, and new fbims of 
polity will become in effect what may be denominated, the sub¬ 
lime mechanics of depravity.” 


CHICHESTER. 


45 


CHAPTER III. 

CHICHESTER-BATTERSEA-DOWNEND-LITERARY PURSUITS-ESSAY 

ON THE GREATNESS OF MAN-JOURNAL-LETTERS ON THE ME¬ 

TROPOLIS. 


1797—1803. 

Early in 1797 Mr. Foster was invited to become the minister of 
a General Baptist church at Chichester. He remained there 
about two years and a half, and applied himself with greater 
earnestness than at any former period to his ministerial duties; 
usually preaching three times on the Sunday, and in various 
ways striving to promote the piety and general improvement of 
the congregation. But though treated with much personal kind¬ 
ness, he met with little encouragement to prosecute his labors. 
A spirit of religious indifference seems to have pervaded the 
society; frequent deaths and removals reduced its numbers, and 
not long after his departure it became extinct. The chapel has 
since been only occasionally used by other denominations. Of 
Foster’s hearers but few now survive who were then of an age to 
retain a recollection of his person and habits. A walk in the 
vicinity of the town is still known by his name ; but his most 
favorite resort for meditation was the chapel, where the well-worn 
bricks of the aisles still exhibit the vestiges of his solitary pacings 
to and fro by moonlight. 

That no proposals to take the pastoral office were made to 
Mr. Foster, either at Dublin or Newcastle, will not appear sur¬ 
prising to the readers of the correspondence, in which he lays 
open his character and views with so much ingenuousness. His 
recluse habits, his peculiar style of preaching, less adapted, pro¬ 
bably, than at any subsequent period to popular or useful effect, 
and especially the fluctuating, unconfirmed state of his own 
mind,—all these circumstances would conspire, with his latitudi- 
narian opinion respecting churches, to render it unlikely that, 
though he would always secure the admiration and attachment of 
a select few, the general suffrage would be in his favor; or if it 
were, that he would accede to its decision. 


40 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


It is, however, most interesting to mark his gradual advance, 
morally and intellectually, under a process of severe self-disci¬ 
pline, and, above all, the increasing intensity of his religious con¬ 
victions. The disclosures made in his letters from Chichester 
and Battersea of the interior sentiments of his heart, the profound 
regrets, the earnest resolves, and the fervent aspirations after 
“ perfection as it shines beauteous as heaven ; and, alas! as re¬ 
mote,” present an era in his spiritual life which no Christian 
mind can contemplate without the deepest sympathy. 

It would be unpardonable not to notice the inestimable benefit 
derived by Foster from his friendship with Mr. Hughes ; and it 
increases not a little the debt of gratitude due from the Christian 
community to that excellent man, that though his own authorship 
was limited to a few fugitive productions, and his sphere of duty 
was one of action rather than of meditation, he performed the 
noble office of stimulating the exertions and cherishing the piety 
of one of the most original and influential religious writers of 
his age. 

From some passages in these letters it will be seen that Foster 
began very early the cultivation of his conversational powers, in¬ 
stead of leaving this invaluable instrument of social pleasure and 
improvement to the casual excitement of circumstances. The 
result was such as might be expected from a mind which was re¬ 
ceiving constant accessions from observation and reflection. No 
one could be on terms of familiar intercourse with Foster, without 
being struck with his affluence of thought and imagery, and the 
readiness with which the most insignificant object or incident was 
taken as a kind of nucleus, on which was rapidly formed an 
assemblage of original remarks. There was scarcely anv subject 
(except the purely scientific or philological) on which it was not 
enough simply to touch, and immediately the stream would gush 
forth. 

But to return to the narrative. About Midsummer, 1799, Mr. 
Foster left Chichester, and resided for a time with Mr. Hughes, 
at Battersea. He explains the nature of his engagements in a 
letter to his friend Mrs. Mant, with whom he resided at Chiches¬ 
ter. “ In one way or another,” he says,* » I have been rather 
busy most of the time since I came hither. Many evenings I have 
spent in interesting company. I have preached several of the sab- 


* To Mrs. Mant, July 23, 1799. 


BATTERSEA-SIERRA LEONE BOYS. 


47 


baths, and made a journey of perhaps forty miles in the country 
to preach to heathens, at one place, in a sort of coal-hole; and to 
plain good saints at another, in a little shop. I stood behind the 
counter, and some of the candles hanging above touched my wig. 
I should extremely like to preach in this style every evening in the 
week. This was not a casual adventure of my own ; there has 
been for some time past a regular plan, which they call a mission, 
in which a considerable number of preachers are employed to go 
round the country to obscure places, where the gospel scarcely 
ever went before, to endeavor to establish a kind of religious posts. 
For two weeks I have been engaged, and shall remain so for some 
time, in another piece of business, of which 1 had no expectation 
when I left you. The Company who made some time since an 
establishment at Sierra Leone in Africa, have brought to England 
twenty black boys to receive European improvements, in order to 
be sent back when they are come to be men, to attempt enlight¬ 
ening the heathen nations of Africa. They have been placed in 
a house at Battersea, for the present, till some kind of regular and 
permanent establishment shall be formed ; and I have been re¬ 
quested, and have agreed, to take the care of them for a few 
months. You may then fancy me sitting in a master’s chair, with 
a look of consequence, encircled with twenty-one black visages, 
pronouncing commands, asking questions, and adminis¬ 

tering instructions—a most monstrous wise man compared with 
my pupils. Most of them have been several years instructed in 
a school at Sierra Leone before they came, and consequently 
speak English perfectly well. Their ages are chiefly from nine 
or ten to fifteen or sixteen. The domestic manager is an aged 
black woman, with her daughter. The elder is a singularly pious 
and happy woman. She has been in different parts of the world, 
has undergone severe trials, but professes to have felt, and evi¬ 
dently now feels, a degree of devout resignation and serenity most 
rarely to be met with. Just at present I have found it most con¬ 
venient to board with her and her daughter, a girl of about, I 
should suppose, twenty.” 

Writing again to the same friend, December 31, 1799, he says, 
“ 1 am just about the end of my engagement with the Africans, 
with whom I had at first no expectation of continuing half so long. 
My successor is one of my own most particular friends, with whom 
I spent several years in Yorkshire. The places where we were 
born are not more than half a mile from each other. I shall now 


48 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


have an interval of comparative leisure, which I must employ in 
writing my long neglected letters, and in studying a number of 
sermons to furnish myself for a preaching expedition, which I ex¬ 
pect to make a month or two hence. But this severe season is 
miserably unfavorable to sedentary mental exercise. I have, too, 
passed so much time in pleasing society of late, that I am afraid 
I may not like solitude again as well as I used to do. The prin¬ 
cipal improvement I have gained here has been in respect of 
manners, conversation, habits, deportment, &c., &c., for I have 
had little time for reading or downright study. Nor, though .1 
have frequently taken a walk into London, for the sake of hearing 
some distinguished preacher, have I seen anything at all of its 
wonderments, not even Fuseli’s pictures from Milton, which can¬ 
not now be seen, as the exhibition is shut up a good while since.” 

Up to the period of leaving Chichester, Foster’s intercourse 
with cultivated persons had been very limited. But on his re¬ 
moval to Battersea, and soon after in the neighborhood of Bristol, 
he was introduced to several individuals of refined taste and su¬ 
perior intelligence. It is said by those who then knew him, that 
his manners were vivacious, and his society in a high degree 
captivating ; his conversation was ardent, intellectual, and im¬ 
aginative, with no faint coloring of the romantic. His outward 
appearance was not thought by him so unworthy of care as in 
later life he looked on such matters, in relation to himself espe¬ 
cially. At the residence of the late Samuel Favell, Esq., of 
Camberwell, he first met Miss Maria Snooke, “ the friend ” to 
whom his essays were addressed, who some years afterwards 
became his wife, and in that relation contributed so largely to his 
happiness by an extraordinary congeniality, which eminently 
fitted her to be his “domestic associate.” 

In 1800 he removed to the village of Downend, five miles from 
Bristol, where he preached regularly at a small chapel erected 
by Dr. Caleb Evans. Towards the close of the year he paid a 
visit to Mrs. Mant, at Chichester, to whom, on his return, he 
thus writes: “ I am still in the same house, but shall remove 
almost immediately, I expect, into a quiet, retired house in the 
neighborhood, inhabited by a respectable and agreeable widow, 
who has several daughters. There I mean' to devote myself to 
retirement and reflection. . . . When I left you, I walked, as I 
intended, to Portsmouth I felt a pensiveness and oppression of 
heart from quitting you and the Westgate friends, which made 


DOWN END. 


49 


me glad of the solitude, the exercise, and the free air. The 
Dearlings were kind to me in an extreme degree during the whole 
of my visit. I sympatiiized with the feelings caused by their 
lamented loss. I spent three or four days at Portsmouth, where 
1 met a cordially kind reception among my few friends. I preaciied 
on tlie Sunday. From Portsmoutli I travelled, by Southampton, 
Salisbury, Devizes, Warminster, and Bath, to Bristol. The 
journey was slow, and, for the most, dull and unsocial. At Sa¬ 
lisbury, indeed, where I had to remain at an inn from five in the 
evening till one or two in the morning, I passed this entire inter¬ 
val in the most vigorous exertion of talking, with a number of 
gentlemen of various characters, some of them sensible, and 
chiefly inhabitants of the town, on subjects of politics, morals, 

and literature.I have formed no new acquaintance here. 

Coleridge is, 1 am told, returning from the north to reside near 
London.” 

In the autumn of 1801, Foster visited for the last time his 
friends and relatives in Yorkshire ; he gives the following account 
of his journey in a letter to Mr. Hughes: “ I travelled straight¬ 
forward to my native place, without stopping, excepting the nights, 
on the road—a space of three days. Part of the country I 
passed through was more in the style of Eden than anything I 
ever saw, from the infinitude of fruits. I found my father, who 
is past seventy, in a very feeble state, but full as well as I ex¬ 
pected. My mother is within a few years of that age, and very 
much declined since I saw her last. My brother has been mar¬ 
ried two or three years, and has a pretty little girl, with which I 
played, and was extremely delighted. That pleasure so often 
celebrated in visiting the scenes of nativity, childhood, and youth, 
1 was never destined to feel. From whatever cause, I have had 
an intense antipathy to the place for many years, and felt no 
pleasure, with the exception of a wild, solitary vale or two, in 
retreading the ancient vestiges. Few local circumstances be¬ 
friended the romantic feelings of my early youth; they did not 
therefore attach themselves to the place, but were enclosed with¬ 
in myself, and carried away.I had quite a stranger’s ex¬ 

perience in respect of the inhabitants; they are so changed since 
I last saw the place, by the death of most of my old acquaint- 
ance, and the manhood of a multitude who then appeared children. 
Much cordiality was evinced by the generality, and especially 
by those who had at all cared about me before: this was some 




50 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


small alleviation of the deep sombre that dyed all my perceptions. 
I preached several times with considerable tclai for Mr. Fawcett, 
who is much the same in each respect as ever. I did not go 
near Leeds, nor therefore see anything of Langdon, nor any 
others, besides the immediate neighborhood of my father’s. 

“In returning I stopped three or four pleasant days at Per- 
shore, chiefly with Rowland, who is agreeably settled there. . . . 
[He] seems a respectable, a very respectable preacher, and is, 
for an orthodox man, of unparalleled candor. My reception was 
extremely friendly, both from him and the few others who well 
remembered me. 

“ I reached Downend at last, a day or two before Mrs. Cox, 
who had a little before seen you, and told me that you appeared 
lively and friendly, and that she had heard you make a tran- 
scendent sermon at Broad Street, the same, I believe, that I 

heard at Thornbury.I was two or three times in Hall’s 

company, and heard him preach once; I am any one’s rival in 
admiring him. In some remarkable manner, everything about 
him, all he does or says, is instinct with poiver. Jupiter seems to 
emanate in his attitude, gesture, look, and tone of voice. Even 
a common sentence, when he utters one, seems to tell how much 
more he can do. His intellect is peculiarly potential, and his 
imagination robes, without obscuring, the colossal form of his 
mind. He made a grand sermon on the fear of death, though I 
was told it was not his very best. ... He was specifically kind 
to me. ... I have engaged in the monthly lecture in Bristol for 
the next year.” 


LETTERS. 


51 


LETTERS. 


XX. TO HIS PARENTS. 

Chichester, March 27, 1797. 

Honored Parents, —I hope to attain in time the power which can 
create for itself interests and varieties which the place will not supply, 
and can therefore communicate something new while circumstances 
continue the same, I feel no considerable alteration in mine. I have 
seen nothing remarkable since 1 wrote; have heard nothing but those 
public events which you have likewise heard ; have dom nothing of great 
consequence. I have indeed said a number of new, and perhaps impor¬ 
tant things. I mean to recollect and write as many of them as I can for 
preservation ; but my memory seems growing worse and worse. On this 
account I frequently now write out the outlines of my discourses, previous 
to speaking, a practice which I had long disused. I am become a little 
more acquainted with the people, and find them thus far very pleasing; 
but I do not need to be informed that the attention and politeness of a 
first acquaintance do not continue always. I resolve, however, to merit 
respect wherever I am, and then I shall at least possess my oion. I know 
what are the qualities and conduct which deserve the esteem of society, 
and promote its happiness; and while each cause of irritation is absent, 
I can wonder that every mortal is not inclined to study the happiness of 
those around him, and that I myself have not, in some instances, made 
greater efforts and sacrifices for this object. Some time since I was 

most of the week, seven miles from here, at the house of a milfer. 

I read there with great pleasure the sermons of Fawcett, the presbyterian, 
of London. My own most successful compositions are considerably 
similar, but inferior to his. He is not indeed sufficiently evangelical. 
The two last weeks I passed with another family in the city, in which 
there are several very agreeable young people. I am conscious of having 
made an effort, a laborious effort, to render them some service. I read 
several books to them, and compelled myself to talk. I tried to com¬ 
municate knowledge, and to excite a wish to attain it. To one of them 
particularly, a fine young woman, I lectured with all my might on the 
value of wisdom, the necessity of reflection, and the folly of dress, 
amusements, and trivial society. In such cases 1 always feel indignant 
at myself that I cannot absolutely compel conviction by a resistless force 
of argument. I never fail, however, to do my best, and to resolve to 
furnish myself with new and more cogent thoughts against the next 
occasion.Since I came, one member of the society, a woman 




52 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


with a large family, is dead. I was requested to make a funeral dis¬ 
course, in doing which I was' exempted from the task of speaking of the 
deceased, by being a total stranger. I never even saw her. I thought the 
sermon the most considerable 1 ever made. Writing to Mr. Hughes, I 
transcribed and sent him the introduction by way of return for his outline, 
which I had used. The text was, “ The living know that they shall 
die.”* I experience the accustomed diversities of enlargement and con- 

* There can be little doubt that this introduction forms the first extract 
in the following communication from Mr. Hughes to the Editor of the 
(Edinburgh) Missionary Magazine, and inserted in the twenty-ninth num¬ 
ber of that periodical, October, 179S. 

“ To the Editor of the Missionary Magazine. 

“ Sir,—I have had frequent occasion to remark, that while scepticism, 
error, indifference, and vagueness of belief, are the luxuriant produce of 
thoughtless minds, and of gay moments, nothing short of a fixed confidence, 
derived, if I may so speak, from the very centre of the gospel, can satisfy 
the man who, in the views of approaching death, sits in solemn judgment 
uponfhimself. The idle glare of a pompous philosophy, and the flattery 
of a deceitful heart, vanish, and some beamings of truth, some profitable 
regrets, some eager wishes, have been known to fill their place. These 
reflections are suggested by the following passages, extracted from the let¬ 
ter of an ingenious friend, whose speculations habitually hover over an 
undefined void, and feed upon a vexatious disappointment, their own 
crea'tion. The extracts breathe the spirit of some happier hour ; and 
should they be deemed likely to fix the undetermined, or to reclaim the 
wanderer, should they in any sense comport with the design of your 
niscellany, their insertion will much oblige your well-wisher, 

“ Theologus. 


“‘reflections on death. 

“ ‘ The records of time are emphatically the history of death. A whole 
review of the world, from this hour to the age of Adam, is but the vision 
of an infinite multitude of dying men. During the more quiet intervals, 
we perceive individuals falling into the dust, through all classes and all 
lands. Then come floods and conflagrations, famines, and pestilence, and 
earthquakes, and battles, which leave the most crowded and social scenes 
silent. The human race resemble the withered foliage of a wide forest; 
while the air is calm, we perceive single leaves scattering here and there 
from the branches ; but sometimes a tempest, or a whirlwind, precipitates 
thousands in a moment. It is a moderate computation which supposes a 
hundred thousand millions to have died since the exit of righteous Abel. 
Oh ! it is true that ruin hath entered the creation of God ! that sin has 
made a breach in that innocence which fenced man round witli immor¬ 
tality ! and even now the great spoiler is ravaging the world. As mankind 
have still sunk into the dark gulf of the past, history has given buoyancv 
to the most wonderful of their achievements and charactWs, and caused 
them to float down the stream of time to our own age. It is well • but if 
sweeping aside the pomp and deception of life, we could draw from the 
last hours and death-beds of our ancestors all the illuminations, convictions, 
and uncontrollable emotions with which they have quitted it, what a far 
more affecting history of man should we possess ! Behold all the gloomy 
apartments oj: ening, in which the wicked have died; contemplate first the 
triumph of iniquity, and here behold their close; witness the terrific faith, 
the too late repentance, the prayers suffocated by despair and the mortal 


LETTERS. 


53 


/ 


traction in public speaking. It is still an interesting problem with me, 
whether zealous animation be attainable when nature has not given it; 
but I am yet willing to persuade myself that it is. I hold it my business 
to make the experiment. This animation must prevail as far as devotion 
does; and who shall mark the limits beyond which devotion shall not 
prevail ? 

I often contemplate, and with the due amazement, the characters of 
Moses, and Elijah, and St. Paul, and St. John, with the rest who have 

agonies! These once they would not believe ;* they refused to consider 
them ; they could not allow that the career of crime and pleasure was to 
end. But now truth, like a blazing star, darts over the mind, and but 
shows the way to that ‘ darkness visible’ which no light can cheer. Dying 
wretch ! we say in imagination to each of these, Is religion true ? Do you 
believe in a God, and another life, and a retribution ^ ‘ 0 yes !’ he answers, 

and expires ! But ‘ the righteous hath hope in his death.’ Contemplate 
through the unnumbered saints that have died, the soul, the true and inex¬ 
tinguishable life of man, charmed away from this globe by celestial music, 
and already respiring the gales of eternity ! If we could assemble in one 
view all the adoring addresses to the Deity, all the declarations of faith in 
Jesus, all the gratulations of conscience, all the admonitions and benedic¬ 
tions to weeping friends, and all the gleams dt opening glory, our souls 
would burn with the sentiment which made the wicked Balaam devout for 
a moment, and exclaim, ‘ Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my 
last end be like his.’ These revelations of death would be the most empha¬ 
tic commentary on the revelation of God. What an affecting scene is a 
(tying world ! Who is that destroying angel whom the Eternal has employed 
to sacrifice all our devoted race 'i Advancing onward over the whole field 
of time, he hath smitten the successive crowds of our hosts with death ; 
and to us he now approaches nigh. Some of our friends have trembled, 
and sickened, and expired, at the signals of his coming ; already we hear 
the thunder of his wings : soon his eye of fire will throw mortal fainting on 
all our companies; his prodigious form will tons blot out the sun, and 
his sword sweep us all from the earth ; ‘ for the living know that they 
shall die.’ 

“ Such are my friend’s reflections on death. I subjoin the following as 
the more affecting statement of his own feelings; hoping it may serve to 
correct that lawless elation, and that superiority to evangelical control, 
which in our ingenious youth we have so often reason to deplore. 

“ ‘ I know not, I w'onder how I shall succeed in mental improvement, 
and especially in religion. Oh, it is a difficult thing to be a Christian! I 
feel the necessity of reform through all my soul. When I retire into 
thought, I find myself environed by a crowd of impressive and awful 
images; I fix an ardent gaze on Christianity, assuredly the last best gift of 
Heaven to men ; on Jesus the agent and example of infinite love; on time 
as it passes away ; on perfection as it shines beauteous as heaven, and alas ! 
as remote ; on my own beloved soul w'hich I have injured, and on the 
unhappy multitude of souls around me ; and I ask myself. Why do not my 
passions burn ^ Why does not zeal arise in mighty w’rath, to dash my icy 
habits in pieces, to scourge me from indolence into fervid exertion, and to 
trample all mean sentiments in the dust ? At intervals I feel devotion and 
benevolence and a surpassing ardor; but when they are turned towards 
substantial, laborious operations, they fly and leave me spiritless amid the 
iron labor. Still, however, I confide in the efficacy of persistive prayer; 
and I do hope that the Spirit of the Lord will yet come mightily upon me, 
and carry me on through toils, and suffering, and death, to stand in Mount 
Zion among the followers of the Lamb !’ ” 


54 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


formed the first and noblest rank of mankind. I have wondered whether 
there is, in the nature of things, an impossibility of ever approaching 
them. But I have concluded with warmth that all things should be at¬ 
tempted, should be suffered, should be sacrificed, in the divine emulation 
of imitating them. I am happy to believe that great and unknown 
assistance is imparted by Heaven to the zealo'^s of such a cause. Oh 
that permanence could be given to the ardent feelings which these con¬ 
templations, at interv'als, inspire ! 

If I ever, as to the speaking part, perform well in public, I shall have 
surmounted prodigious difficulty. Reading aloud is a perfect purgatory. 
My tongue rubs against my teeth like Balaam’s ass against the wall, and 
will not, cannot, perform the movement which its master requires. Yet 
for the sake of improvement, I mean frequently to read to Mrs. Kings- 
ford, if she will hear me. I have plenty of books at command. 

Next to an improved and happy state of my own mind, what I most 
want, and here probably must not find, is a companion of originality and 
genius, with whom I might expatiate on the intellectual field, and inter¬ 
change sentiments which the majority of men would not understand. I 
should be greatly happy to be within reach of Mr. Hughes. My life hith¬ 
erto has been most inauspicious to the most interesting kinds of human 

attachment.I am tolerably social; partly from inclination, and partly 

from a consideration of propriety ; yet solitude is my paradise. Besides, 
necessity will concur with disposition, if my literary projects are prose¬ 
cuted into any success. I am sorry that the circumstances and very 
small number of young persons that are likely to come within my ac¬ 
quaintance here, give at present no encouragement to try my favorite 
plan of a lecture, or whatever else it might be called. I observe, too, that 
if I were to execute it, it must be very different from what it ought to be 
in a country place like Hebden-Bridge, on account of the very different 
circumstances and habits of the young people in a city. Folly has a 
much greater variety of modes than absolute vice can take. Here I 
must lecture against artificial manners, and insincerity, and affectation, 
and ceremony, and cards, and the whole routine of polished insipidity 
for which this place is remarkable. 

The clergy here are for the most part, it seems, a very worthless clan, 
though all people seem to agree in marking one honorable exception, 
highly honorable for his talents, virtuous conduct, liberality, and zealous 
activity; his name is Walker. He was one of my hearers yesterday 
evening. I should not be sorry to become acquainted with him, but I 
am little inclined to court any man’s acquaintance. 

.... I and a young man of the family I was with last week, propose 
a week or two hence to make a forced march to Salisbury, between forty 
and fifty miles from here, principally to see the famous Stonehenge. I 
am endeavoring, wherever I am, to examine every object with the keen¬ 
est investigation, conscious that this is the best of all methods for obtain¬ 
ing knowledge fresh and original. It was by this method that Dr 



LETTERS, 


55 


Johnson was empowered to display human characters in his Rambler, 
and Thomson to describe Nature in his Seasons. It is impossible to 
adapt many kinds of instruction with precision, without that minute and 
uncommon knowledge which observation alone can supply. 

1 frequently form conjectures about you and my friends in the neigh¬ 
borhood, all in vain. There are indeed no more young marriages left 
to be imagined (unless it be that of Thomas) ; “ I alone am escaped.” 
How different it is from the time when Greaves, Fawcett, Horsfall, and 
myself were all associate boys, touched with that kind of sentiment 
which hope alone gives ;—possession, I believe, has no sentiment so 
animated. Respecting them there seems nothing to imagine ; nothing to 
inquire, nothing to learn. They have obtained what they wanted in life, 
and now are quiet, and wish to sit down free from further change. My 
feelings are almost infinitely different. And though it would be pleasing to 
see a kind of certainty of some happy circumstances in future, yet I am 
very far indeed from wishing to discern through the gloom, the wall, the 
limit, that is to bound my scope. I have long wished, as one of the 
sublimest means of enjoyment, to attain a habitual indifference to life 
itself, and am firmly of opinion that to a good man there can be nothing 
so happy in life as a noble occasion of throwing it away. Thomas is 
always remembered by me with affectionate regard. I constantly wish 
and pray for the happiness of you all, and shall be glad to learn how far 
you possess it. 


XXI. TO HIS PARENTS. 

Chichester, December 6, 1797. 

Honored Parents,— I have just been admiring the marvellous con¬ 
struction of the mind, in the circumstance of its enabling me, as I sit by 
my candle here, in a chamber at Chichester, to view almost as distinctly, 
as if before my eyes, your house, the barn, the adjacent fields, neighbor¬ 
ing houses, and a multitude of other objects. I can go through each 
part of the house, and see the exact form of the looms, tables, maps, 
cakes of bread, and so on, down to my mother’s thimble. Yet I still 
find myself almost three hundred miles off. At present I take no notice 
of the things about me ; but perhaps at some future time, at a still greater 
distance, I may thus review in imagination the room in which I now 
write, and the objects it contains; and I find that few places where I 
have continued some time, can be thus recollected without some degree 
of regret; particularly the regret that I did not obtain and accomplish 
all the good that was possible at that place, and that time. * Will it be 
so when hereafter I recollect this time, and this place ? I have just been 
reading an author who maintains, with very great force of reasoning, that 
no man could, in any situation, have acted differently from wheat he has 



56 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


done. Though I do not see how to refute his arguments, I feel as if I 
ought to diher from his opinion. He refers to Jonathan Edwards as a 
powerful advocate of the same doctrine. He says such an expression as 
I unll exert myself'' is absurd. It is an expression which, notwith¬ 
standing, I am inclined to repeat, as I view the wide field of duty before 
me. My hoj)e of success, however, with respect to some of the objects of 
exertion, is but small. I preacli now three times on the Sunday ; I study 
my sermons more than in any former season. They are, too, I believe, 
more than in any former season, what may be termed evangelical. For 
the most part I think them considerably gocxl; but I do not form this judg¬ 
ment from their efecl; that appears to be very small. Religion here 
seems to have been forced into an unnatural and accommodating mixture 
with the world, from which no representations can reclaim it. How far 
the prevailing spirit may have an influence on myself, I cannot exactly 
know, unless I were to pass into the sphere of an oj)posite influence. It 
must be great energy that can absolutely vanquish the influences of 
situation. I find, at least, that I liave not lost the power of seeing what 
is wrong in others, and feeling what is wrong in myself. I told you 
that the “ old people in the society were dying fast away.” Two of 
them (women) are dead since I wrote so.» One of them was a person 
of property, and what was called one of the principal peojde here. She 
had considerable sense, was a violent democrat, &c., fcc.; but I remem¬ 
ber her with but a very small degree of respect. She always treated 
me in a very friendly manner ; but she was a bigot and a miser. I tell 
the people that I deem covetousness one of the very worst of vices. But 
those on whom particularly I wish to impress this truth “ never heed 
me,” as the old fellow said about wasting the gunpowder. The other 
was a person of a very good, inoflensive kind of cliaracter. I made 
what is called a funeral sermon on her account. Tlie object of it was to 
answer this simple question, “ What is it to be prepared to die ?” I at¬ 
tempted to show that a complete preparation for deatli must consist in 
three plain things ; first, faith in Jesus Christ; second, a devout and 
pure state of mind ; third, a truly Christian or virtuous conduct. I 
learnt that the sermon was one of the most popular I have made. The 
mortality in the society within the last two years, has been extraordina¬ 
ry. There are no substitutes in the same families, to fill the abdicated 
places. Instead of that, some of the surviving relatives have removed 
to distant situations, and left a melancholy and chilling show of vacant 
seats. I think the society is hastening to dissolution with a progress 
that no revival is likely to retard. Fate has fixed her seal. I was” one 
Sunday, about a month since, at Portsmouth, and preached twice. I fell 
among two or three uncommonly agreeable and sensible families ; but 
the society and congregation there are in the same frost-bitten state as 
here. I continue in health, meet with a continuance of friendly atten¬ 
tion, live still in the same manner, have no want of books, and have a 
very decent wardrobe. I do not employ much time in visits, because 


LETTERS. 


5 - 


generally I do not find that can employ it to any valuable purpose. I 
used to tell you when in Lanes, that I never lost time when in company ; 
and this was true. But here company is generally of a kind to make 
me most sincerely regret that I cannot visit and talk at Carrs. For the 
most part I find conversation a mere chat about trifles, and the custom is 
so obstinate that I can seldom succeed to make it anything else. I be¬ 
lieve I rarely fail to make an efibrt this way. Often I make a very 
vigorous one, not only for the sake of conscience, but because my mind, 
accustomed to interesting sentiments, needs them to gratify its taste, which 
nauseates insipidity. Often I have had occasion to look round on a com¬ 
pany with mingled wonder and contempt, to observe the conversation for 
ever stealing away from the neighborhood of important subjects, to seek 
its element among the most insignificant ones. The fault is not mine; 
There are few articles in which I feel myself so clear of guilt. Proba¬ 
bly I told you that the situation gave me no scope for executing my pro¬ 
ject of a course of addresses to young persons. Some time since, when 
thinking of one particular young person, it occurred to me that it might 
be of some use to arrange my reflections on sOme important subjects in 
a series of letters, and address them to that individual. The person is a 
young woman, the daughter of one of the poor members of the society, a 
person to whom such a service, if I can render it a service, will be very 
seasonable. If I continue here long enough to finish the series, and if 
it be tolerably satisfactory to myself, it may be possible to make a fur¬ 
ther use of it.* 

I sometimes feel convictions, impressive even to violence, of the duty 
of doing all the good I possibly can. The single idea of philanthropy is 
inspiring and grand ; but I perceive that the practical detail of toils and 
self-denials opens a view very different from the first flash of the sub¬ 
ject. Certainly, liowever, I have no determination more fixed and ani¬ 
mated than that of devoting myself to the service of mankind. My 
father’s favorite sentence is cordially mine, The noblest motive is the 
public good.” I am willing to indulge a favorable conjecture respecting 
your health, your circumstances, and business; but I feel it would be 
absurd to be sanguine. What is the opinion about national matters 
among you now ? Does any one persist to dissuade from thinking of 
them ; and talk of leaving them to the management of those who are 
appointed to manage them, &c. ? The crisis seems fast approaching 
that will compel to think and to feel, and perhaps to act too. The infatu¬ 
ation of thoughtless acquiescence has prevailed wretchedly too long. 
Fox has assured us that to talk any longer about parliament is idle; 
and that the nation must exert itself, or prepare to suffer the conse¬ 
quences of its opprobrious tameness. My reflections are sometimes 
very serious on the question of what would be my duty in the event of a 
French army appearing on our plains. In all events I commend you and 
myself to Heaven. 


Journal, Nos. 500 and 731 


58 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


XXII. TO HIS FAB INTS. 

Chichester, Feb. 12, 1798. 

Honored Parents,— ... I wish I could inform you of wonderful 
changes in myself,—changes which I have long projected, which I be¬ 
lieve to be possible, which are extremely necessary, which I am still 
laboring, but of which the advances are but gradual and but slow. Yet 
I am highly pleased to feel that they are somewhat advancing. I am 
acquiring something of that military discipline of thought* and action, 
which I suppose will be indispensable through the whole of life ; and 
in this supposition I am glad that life is but short. I sometimes study, 
and pray, and talk, with such an exceeding ardor, that if it could but be 
constant, I should soon become an eminent Christian, and an eminent 
man. My great fault is a tendency (I hope not an incorrigible tendency) 
to indolent languor. The attainment, if possible, of habitual energy, I 
feel to be an urgent duty, and an exceeding difficulty. For this purpose 
I endeavor to assemble a host of impressive considerations around my 
mind to compel it to activity. It is very unfortunate that many of the 
circumstances that surround me are not of a kind to act in alliance with 
these stimulating considerations. A situation where there is nothing 
lively, will, to a certain degree, inevitably infect one with its dulness. 
There are situations in the world that would probably aid and augment 
that fire of mind which the influence of my present one rather tends to 
quench. But I shall not abandon the generous strife. I still possess 
what may be called invariable health; my diet continues of the same 
inexpensive kind ; water is still my drink. I congratulate myself often 
on the superiority in this respect which I shall possess in a season of 
difficulty, over many that I see. I could, if necessary, live with philo¬ 
sophic complacency on bread and water, on herbs, or on sour milk with 
the Tartars. 

.... I have a coat sufficiently grave—a dark brownish grey—with 
a black velvet collar. Every article of clothing is here expensive in the 
extreme, and yet nowhere can it be more necessary to dress well. It is 
what may be called a very elegant and fashionable place, and not large 
enough, like London, Dublin, Bristol, &c., for a man to lose himself in 
it, so as to be easy and unnoticed. At present I see very little indeed 
of what is called company. The persons are very few whom my eccle¬ 
siastical engagement brings me acquainted with, and I am little inclined 
to seek many others. 

I am beginning to learn the French language, with a very sensible 

* “A rational repast; 

Exertion, vigilance, a mind in arms, 

A military discipline of thought. 

To foil temptation in the doubtful field; 

And ever-waking ardor for the right.” 

Young.— Night viii 


LETTERS. 


59 


emigrant priest for my tutor. Such an accomplisliment may be of 
special use ere while. The course of my preaching and reading does 
not materially alter. I have spent rather too many hours in bed this 
winter, but shall not so mispend many more; I mean when it becomes 
warmer to go and bathe and swim in the sea. 

I lately heard from Mr. Hughes, who, with his family, are as well as 
usual. He has abandoned his education project. He expresses himself 
pleased and useful in his preaching work. He is engaged in a kind of 
mission, or plan of travelling to dilFerent places to preach, in the county 
of Surrey. He writes in a strain of animated piety, and exhorts me to 
the same. 

My thoughts often revert to political subjects. The ominous aspect 
of the times both illustrates and augments their importance. If these 
subjects had gained the general attention of the people sufficiently much, 
and sufficiently early, allairs would not have come to the execrable con¬ 
dition we now behold them in. While men have slept the tares have 
been sown, and now" threaten to yield a harvest of death. The conse¬ 
quences of contented ignorance can never be good. The enormous 
guilt of such a war without, and of such oppression and corruption 
within, is chiefly chargeable on the thoughtless indifference of the peo¬ 
ple at large. If a nation will not be vigilant, it must be content to be 
betrayed. No part of the fault is mine. 

In this quarter opinions differ as to an invasion. Tlie intention of the 
French, however, seems evidently to be most serious and determined. 
If so, unless the elements again disappoint them, it must be a terrible 
kind of opposition indeed that can prevent them from accomplishing the 
first part of their design; and if they land, who shall prophesy the 
scenes that are to follow ? But w’hether they come or not, things con¬ 
tinuing to proceed in their present train, must end, at no remote period, 
in convulsion, probably revolution. It seems to me the duty of each 
young man especially, seriously to think and make up his mind as 
to what he ought to do in the approach and the reality of such an 
event. 


XXIII. TO HIS PARENTS. 

Chichester, July 13, 1798. 

Honored Parents, —I wish I could compensate for so long a silence 
by communicating something that should give you great satisfaction; 
or at least something that should be new. A want of this, mixing itself 
with my antipathy to writing letters, and my disposition to procrastinate, 
is always a principal cause of my neglect in this particular—a neglect 
which I feel quite certain it would be unjust to ascribe to a w"ant of af¬ 
fection or friendship, though indeed I cannot deny that it may have that 





60 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


appearance. I have sometimes thought I would write to no one till I 
could tell something extraordinary. I think I will therefore tell nothing 
about my mind till I can announce a completed revolution there ; till 
every unworthy habit be melted away, and every conscientious principle 
in powerful operation. It would be useless to detail the catalogue of 
defects, and quite unnecessary to enumerate intended reforms. The 
revolutions of the world often admonish me that the mind of a reflective 
man ought, in respect of changes, to be beforehand with the world,—to 
have first achieved each important reform within itself, and to be able to 
say to other men, “ Follow meP 

The events of this neighborhood are but quit® of the common kind. 
Alternate alarms of the coming of the French, and ridicule of those 
alarms when past; the parade of soldiers, and arms, and drums, and 
loyalty, and fashion, contrasted with complaints of declining trade, an 
enormous pressure of taxes, the wan and hopeless looks of poverty, 
execration of the government and governors, and sighs for a revolution. 

I forget the precise time of hay-harvest in the North; here it has 
been over some weeks, and had a fine dry season. The corn fields are 
becoming yellowish. There is a large quantity of the smaller kinds 
of fruit, such as gooseberries, cherries, &-c. ; no considerable allowance, 
however, has fallen to my share. 

The congregation here remains almost at a stand. Another member 
of the society, an aged woman, died about the time that I wrote my last 
letter. A whole view of the circumstances of the place strikes with an 
influence of the most bleak and chilly kind, on a mind in itself too cold, 
and which needs the directly opposite extreme of stimulation and fire. 
Yet in whatever manner I feel, my public addresses are not, I think, 
particularly defective in point of animation. Vastly remote from method- 
istic violence, I yet think I cannot be charged with dulness. As to being 
in any great or considerable degree useful, it is a thing quite out of the 
question: I never conceive any such hope. 

In this town the persons that concern themselves any way about re¬ 
ligion, seem to me to fall into two classes;—one who regard only a 
farce of forms and ceremonies, and what are called decorums. These 
are devout worshippers of gowns and bands, and the whole ecclesiastical 
mummery, and think it a most profane thing to appear in a pulpit in any 

other color than hallowed black.iVnd another class who have 

zealously adopted a few peculiar phrases and notions; some of them 
proper, some cant, some unintelligible, and some absurd. They only 
want to have these repeated with heat and positiveness an indefinite 
number of times, with occasional damnatory clauses for the edification 
of such as happen to think otherwise, and they are satisfied. If a man 
has discarded, or perhaps never learnt, the accustomed theological dic¬ 
tion, and speaks in the general language of good sense, as he would on 
any other subject, they do not like his sentiments, even though accordant 


LETTERS. 


61 


with their own ;—his language and his thoughts are all pagan; he offers 
sacrifice with strange fire. 

I sometimes fall into profound musings on the state of this great world, 
on the nature and the destinies of man, on the subject of the question 
“ What is truth ?” The whole hemisphere of contemplation appears 
inexpressibly strange and mysterious. It is cloud pursuing cloud, forest 
after forest, and Alps upon Alps ! It is in vain to declaim against scep¬ 
ticism. I feel with an emphasis of conviction, and wonder, and regret, 
that almost all things are enveloped in shade, that many things are 
covered with thickest darkness, that the number of things to which cer¬ 
tainty belongs is small.I hope to enjoy “ the sunshine of the 

other w’orld.” One of the very few things that appear to me not doubt¬ 
ful, is the truth of Christianity in general; some of the evidences of 
which I have lately seen most ably stated by Archdeacon Paley in his 
book on the subject. 

I should be perfectly in health but for some kind of complaint in my 
eyes, w’hich gives me some apprehension. I have felt something of it 
ever since last summer or autumn, when it was caused by walking late 

in the evening, in tlie damp air of a shady retreat.I very often 

bathe and swim in an inlet of the sea, w^hich comes up within two miles 
of the town. I have persevered in learning to swim, and should now bo 

but little afraid of the pits and rivers in your neighborhood.I 

did hot suppose that my father’s remarks and sentiments required a dis¬ 
tinct and formal reply. I am always convinced of the sincere benevo¬ 
lence that dictates them, always feel that they have a claim to attention 
and to gratitude, and am always happy to adopt them as my own, w^hen 
my judgment perceives their justice. 


XXIV. TO HIS PARENTS. 

Chichester, 19, 179S. 

PIoxoRED Parents, —I am not insensible of the value of that kind 
attention of Providence which still prevents me from having to commu¬ 
nicate to you, and from hearing from you, any disastrous intelligence. 
I can indeed almost wonder, w^hen I consider what a thing is life, that I 
retain it thus through lengthened months and years, and when I consider 
how still more frail is health, that I have to tell you I still possess its 

utmost vigor, excepting only in the case of my eyes. 

' What may be the general state of religious societies in England, 1 am 
utterly ignorant. Not a particle of that kind of intelligence seems to 
circulate down to this coast. I have no hope of any extensive preva- 
mnce of true religion without the interference of angelic or some other 
extraordinary and yet unknowm agency to direct its energies, and con¬ 
quer the vast combination of obstruction and hostility that opposes it. 






62 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


An amazing fact is, that this hostility has hitherto been mainly success¬ 
ful. The triumphs of religion have been most limited and small, those 
of evil almost infinite. We see the melancholy result of an experiment 
of eighteen hundred years, the whole Christian era. This result com¬ 
pels me to conclude that religion is utterly incompetent to reform the 
world, till it is armed with some new and most mighty powers; till it 
appears in a new and last dispensation. Men are the same they always 
were; and, therefore, till some such wonderful event take place, their 
affections will be commanded by sense in opposition to faith, by earth in 
preference to heaven. The same causes operating, it were absurd to 
expect different effects. My melancholy musings on the state of the 
world have been much consoled by the famous maxim, “ Whatever is, is 
right.” Yes, I believe that the whole system taken together is the best 
possible—is absolutely good: and that all the evil that ever has taken 
place, or that now prevails, was strictly necessary to that ultimate good 
which the Father of all intends. Believing that He has in view an end 
infinitely and perfectly good, I must believe that all things which take 
place among his creatures are means, proceeding in an undeviating line 
towards that end, and that, in decreeing the end, he decreed also the 
means. As nothing can take place beyond the sphere of his power, 
nothing can take place against his will; therefore the evils, the wicked¬ 
ness of mankind, are not against his sovereign will. Nothing is con¬ 
tingent ; all evils are foreseen by him, and he permits them ; but he 
would not. permit them if something else would better answer his final 
purposes, inasmuch as he chooses the best possible means to accomplish 
his end; to suppose otherwise would be to suppose that the great work 
might have been done better. He, from the beginning, chose that all 
things should come to pass as they have done, as they do, and as they 
will hereafter ; otherwise something must have come to pass either with¬ 
out his knowledge or against his will. All the events of the world, all 
the actions of mankind, have been a correct chain of causes and conse¬ 
quences, up to the first causes; these first causes were all formed and 
fixed by God, with a perfect foresight of all the consequences, and he 
formed and fixed these causes in order to produce these very conse¬ 
quences. If sin be traced up to its cause, that cause will be found to 
have been —the nature and the state of man; but this cause was precisely 
so fixed by the Creator, and evidently with a determination that this fatal 
consequence should follow ; for he fixed it so that he saw this conse¬ 
quence most certainly would follow. He who fixed the first great mov¬ 
ing causes appointed all their effects to the end of the world. “ What¬ 
ever is, is right.” Thus, regarding God as strictly the cause of all 
things, I am led to consider all things as working his high will; and to 
believe that there is neither more nor less evil in the world than he saw 
accurately necessary toward that ultimate happiness to which he is train¬ 
ing, in various manners, all his creatures. In this view, too, I can 
sometimes commit myself to his hands with great complacency, certain 


LETTERS. 


63 


that he will do for me, in all respects, that which is the best. . . . The 
season, so gloomy here, must be dismal up on your hills; it would be 
peculiarly so to my father, if the spirit and the hopes of religion were 
not independent of changing times, and capable of triumphing over them 
all. 


XXV. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Chichester, Feb. 1-5, 1799. 

My dear Friend, —Forgive me that the business of this letter is, like 
that of so many former ones, entirely personal, and the person—myself. 
I am anxious to show you that your remonstrances, accusations, regrets, 
are not all in vain, though even during my last visit you thought them 
so. Unfortunately the most cynical fold of my character is the outer¬ 
most. But impressions may disappear on the surface because they are 
gone inward. 

I have thought with great emotion on some of the views and facts pre¬ 
sented to me while with you. I have before expressed my conviction of 
the value of preaching as an instrument of the best kind of utility. 
How much must the sentimental force of this conviction have been aug¬ 
mented by the representation of the apostolic felicities of such a man as 
Pearce ! I feel affectingly that this is to live divinely; that this is indeed 
to imitate the great Master, and to pursue a course which his approbation 
will crown. How much I long to call such men brothers, and to attest 
the relationship by a similarity of spirit and of action! 

I have asked myself with solemn earnestness, and deep regret, “ Why 
am not I added to the evangelic constellation ?” Oh ! why not myself 
an apostle—a confessor ? Shall I be indeed estranged from the best 
cause ? At the day of accounts, shall it indeed be found that I have 
been in the Messiah’s kingdom, less than all my contemporaries ? Am 
not I to hear the “ Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord ?” I have asked myself, “ Are the obstacles insupe- 
rable ? are the causes of failure necessarily perpetual ?” I am not con¬ 
vinced that the answer ought to be affirmative. I love the evangelic style 
of truth when I read it, or hear it, more than any other;—it appeals di¬ 
rectly to my heart, and makes me aspire ardently to attain that divine 
discipleship, that devotion to Jesus, which would make me zealous, and 
useful, and happy. I am unwilling to believe myself finally precluded 
from the most favored and popular field of religious exertion,—that in 
which such men as Pearce, Hinton, and yourself are laboring. You 
intimated in your last letter that this career is still open to me, let but my 
mind be adapted. You repeated the opinion during my visit. I wish to 
know how far you were sincere. I should be happy to make one more 
experiment among people, if they are to be found, who have all the 



64 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


warmth of the gospel. There is a feeling that tells me I should succeed. 
Do you deem my present views of Christianity, if aided by more fervor 
of inculcation, essentially inadequate ? My opinions are in substance 
Calvinistic, and therefore, when fully brought out, differ obnoxiously 
from those of the General Baptists here or elsewhere. Add to this, that 
many of their societies, either through the medium of their opinions, or 
from some other cause, seem to have been smitten with a mortal coldness, 
and incurable decay. Among them therefore I could never reach the 
animated freedom, if I could obtain even a bare toleration, of that strain 
of preaching which my views require, and of which some enviable ex¬ 
amples evince the superior efficacy, and in this efficacy evince perhaps 
the peculiar approbation of God. 

Now then the question is. Will you recommend me to any society you 
may hear of in your connexion, or to any other man (Pearce for instance) 
whose local information may be more extensive ? I have an irresistible 
conviction that “ the truth as it is in Jesus,” is incomparably the best 
thing that can be administered to my fellow-mortals, and that he is the 
noblest of men who administers this with the most fidelity and zeal. I 
feel this moment as if an angel appeared to me and commanded me thus 
to employ myself to my last hour. Yes, I will! The idea of losing all 
that glory of Christian achievement and immortal reward, which still 
appears as if it were jwssible to me, would greatly aggravate the sadness 
with which I think how much I have already lost. 

I repeat that while I cannot but contemn the circle and the spell of 
any denomination, as a party of systematics professing a monopoly of 
truth, I hold (I believe) accurately the leading points of the Calvinistic 
faith; as the corruption of human nature, the necessity of a divine 
power to change it, irresistible grace, the influence of the Spirit, the doc¬ 
trine of the atonement in its most extensive and emphatic sense, final 
perseverance, &c., &c. As to my opinion respecting the person of 
Christ, a candid and honest statement would be, that I deem it the wisest 
rule to use precisely the language of Scripture, without charging myself 
with a definite, a sort of mathematical hypothesis, and the interminable 
perplexities of explication and inference. I am probably in the same 
parallel of latitude with respect to orthodoxy, as the revered Dr. Watts 
in the late maturity of his thoughts. I assigned to you the reason why 
I consider the question not of primary importance; nor in fact is any 
question so, which is of difficult comprehension and determination. 

The necessarian scheme, which has greatly consoled some of my feel¬ 
ings regarding mankind, has not, however, diminished my regrets for my 
own past negligence, nor the ever springing desire to tread the exalted 
path of Christian heroism,—of prophets and apostles; and by teaching 
the strict connection between cause and eftect, it has enforced my con¬ 
viction of the necessity of means and strenuous exertion to the attain¬ 
ment of ends. 



LETTERS. 


65 


XXVI. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

[Date uncertain.] 

My dear Friend,— I have nothing additional or different to express 
on the theological subject of our correspondence. Every new reflection 
tells me that my evangelic determinations ought to be, and every hope 
flatters that they will be, irreversible. Assembling into one view all 
tilings in the world that are important, and should be dear to mankind, 
I distinguish the Christian cause as the celestial soul of the assemblage, 
evincing the same pre-eminence, and challenging the same emphatic pas¬ 
sion, which in any other case mind does beyond the inferior elements; 
and I have no wish of equal energy with that which aspires to the most 
intimate possible connection with Him who is the life of this cause, and 
the life of the world. 

I believe I expressed myself in a very crude manner on the subject of 
elocution, in my last letter. I must have utterly misrepresented myself 
if you suppose my sentiments go in the smallest degree to approve a dry, 
monotonous enunciation. My leading principle is the simple and trite 
one, that every kind of speaking, whether argumentation, invective, fa¬ 
miliar ideas, or solemn ones, should in public always take that modula¬ 
tion of voice and cast of manner, which in the actual intercourse of life 
is ascertained to be the appropriate one; and that there ought to be no 
canonical manner, belonging by distinction to the pulpit. It is of course 
that the sentimental inionalion of voice should not be assumed, but when, 
and in the degree in which, the sentiment is there. Perhaps it is fair 
that a speaker’s manner should thus always indicate the present pitch of 
his mind. In my diction I am sensible that a striking defect must have 
appeared in most of the extemporaneous specimens you have heard. 
You would notice a great many inert, make-weight pieces of expression, 
to supply the want of continuity; many spiritless terminations of a sen¬ 
tence, hanging to the period like a withered hand to the body; a defi¬ 
ciency of the life-blood, so to call it, of fervid intelligence, circulating- 
vitality to the last extremities of expression, into the minutest ramifica¬ 
tions of phrase; a certain something like restive unwillingness in the 
train of words to move on, producing an effect rather like the creak of 
unoiled wheels; and a want of what I again name the liquid flux of 
expression, varying, swelling, concealing each rugged point as it glides 
freely over, and passing gracefully away. 

I repeat that these defects belong to my uninspired seasons ; that they 
are not inserted into my most appropriate and characteristic diction, even 
my letters will testify. I own it, however, a criminal neglect, not to 
have acquired that command of my mind which would make it indepen¬ 
dent on the visitations of sentiment, for an execution at least moderately 
proper and graceful. 


0 


66 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


XXVII. TO HIS PARENTS. 

CJlichcster, March 25, 1799. 

Honored Parents, —Some of the particulars contained in your letter 
occasioned me considerable surprise. At an adv^anced age, changes of 
any kind are unpleasant, and a new habitation may at first require one 
degree of patience added to that which your situation needed before.. 
However, the principal consideration in any residence is that piety which 
is confined to none, and which makes into a temple of the divinity what¬ 
ever house it inhabits. To the immortal spirit every house, and the 
world itself, is but a prison ; you carry into your new abode the pleasing 
eertainty, that no sublunary abode will detain you so long as the one 
wdiich you have quitted. How much you will know before so many 
more years shall have passed ! Long before that time you will have 
seen the visions of eternity ; you will have entered the alone happy man¬ 
sions ; you will have joined the great company which no man can num¬ 
ber. Yes, and at an earlier period or a later I hope I shall meet you 
there, after having overcome through the blood of the Lamb. Go before, 
if it must be so, and enter first into the paradise of God ; I trust that the 
path of faith and zeal will conduct me to the same happy place, and that 
He who has the keys of the invisible world will give me admittance 
there. 

.... Provided I could realize the requisite preliminaries, a matrimo¬ 
nial connexion is certainly the object of my wishes at present, as much 
as, perliaps more than, at any former time. Certain romantic projects, 
stretching into wild and distant scenes, have, for some time past, con¬ 
siderably faded on my imagination. I wish it were possible to mingle 
enthusiasm of design with sobriety of calculation, and then to crowm this 
conjunction with the addition of resolute, persevering industry. 

Within the last fortnight my eyes have been in one respect (for two or 
three complaints seem to meet in them) considerably better. I do not 
feel reason to be sanguine as to the effect of the means last prescribed 
to me, but shall persist for the present to employ them, though attended 
with much pain. To-morrow I mean to write a statement of symptoms, 
in a letter to Hughes, to be shown to the gentleman I last consulted, and 
to whom I was introduced through the means of Hughes’s acquaintance 
with him. If it appear necessary, I will not hesitate to make another 
journey to London on purpose. I can at present read a moderate time 
with tolerable ease, which I could by no means do some time since. 
Conscience has repeatedly made accusation on my neglect of employing 
this faculty, each faculty, the whole man, in a zealous prosecution of the 
noblest purposes. Hoping for a restoration of soundness in this valuable 
article, and determined to consecrate my whole self, whether in disorder or 
well, to the work of God, with even an apostle’s zeal, I feel much resigna¬ 
tion to his providence, respecting the event of this and each other a^ir. 
Your prayers I know will not be wanting. In mine I have felt and ac- 


LETTERS. 


67 


knowledged the necessity of admonitory dispensations, and even have 
been in some degree thankful for them. I have supplicated heaven, that 
whatever afflictions are absolutely needful to make me and keep me 
such as I ought to be, and such as I find it very difficult to be, may be 
applied. At whatever cost, I fervently wish to be humble, to be devo¬ 
tional, to be heavenly-minded, in short, to be a Christian. Life is but 
short; and it is long, long since I fancied it could be a scene of pleasure 
and paradise. I consent to take it as a series of sorrows ; to pass through 
it as a vale of tears, if in the end that better world may pour all its light 
and its joys on my soul. 

My visit to Mr. Hughes has been of great service in respect of my 
religious feelings. He has the utmost degree of evangelic animation, 
and has incessantly, with affectionate earnestness in his letters, and still 
more in his personal intercourse, acted the monitor on this subject. It 
has not been in vain. I have felt the commanding force of the duty to 
examine and to judge myself with a solemn faithfulness. In some mea¬ 
sure I have done so, and I see that on this great subject I have been 
wrong. The views which my judgment has admitted in respect to the 
gospel in general, and Jesus the great pre-eminent object in it, have not 
inspired my affections in that animated, unbounded degree, which would 
give the energy of enjoyment to my personal religion, and apostolic zeal 
to my ministrations among mankind. This fact is serious, and moves 
my deep regrets. The time is come to take on me, with stricter bonds 
and more affectionate warmth, the divine discipleship. I fervently invoke 
the influences of Heaven, that the whole spirit of the gospel may take 
possession of all my soul, and give a new and powerful impulse to my 
practical exertions in the cause of the Messiah. 

My opinions are more Calvinistic than when I first came here; so 
much so as to be in direct hostility with the leading principles of belief 
in this society. The greatest part of my views are, I believe, acclirately 
Calvinistic. My opinion respecting future punishments is an exception. 

Judging from what is here, I deem that the season must with you be 
still very inclement. Very soon, however, another May will shed its 
mild influences to alleviate my father’s pains and confinement. My 
mother will feel even so short a remove an added burden in the fatigue 
of a return from Hebden-bridge, Heptonstall, &c. Which house is it in 
the fold that you occupy ? Nothing of consequence is in motion here, 
except indeed the arrangements respecting the income tax, which seem 
to transform many into enemies of government who professed to be friends 
before. What is the state, on the whole, of the cotton trade ? No trade, 
however, no resources of any kind, can long support the present enor¬ 
mous system—as about a third part of the whole productive industry 
of the nation goes directly to the purposes of government and war, with 
the prospect of a still larger proportion being so diverted each succeeding 
year. 

The fate of Europe, it seems, is about to be put to a last trial in Ger- 


68 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


many. If the French are still successful, universal revolution, England 
not excepted, seems a matter of course. One of my last sermons was 
on the text, “ The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice.” His kingdom 
come, his will be done. 


XXVIII. TO AN UNKNOWN LADY. 

Chichester [date uncertain]. 

Miss C.— It is an ingenuous spirit which approaches you—happy to 
avow an animated esteem for your qualities, and very sorry for the 
destiny which renders you a stranger. 

The accidental mention of some of your relatives, during an evening 
I lately passed with a highly intelligent and respected gentleman, led 
the conversation at last to you. I had not heard of you before. Your 
friend (qualified by uncommon discernment and coolness to represent 
justly) displayed a character which captivated my attention entirely, for 
I instantly perceived that no common spirit gleamed in its expressive 
lines. He described your quickness and vigor of thought, the cordial 
ardor of your sentiments, and your resolute perseverance to obtain what¬ 
ever accomplishments you determined ought to be yours. He spoke of 
a vivacity significant and characteristic, even in that very sprightly ex¬ 
treme into which he intimated it sometimes plays. He added the best 
praise, apparently with a confidence it would be merited for ever; he 
said you were good. He evidently described with great pleasure, and 
has selected a most fortunate subject to impart it. I acknowledged the 
claims of the interesting stranger with an emotion that exulted in an 
occasion of expressing itself so warmly. We could have wished not to 
feel that the instance we contemplated was a rare one. We were sorry 
to glance a look of mingled pity and blame on the common currency of 
female character; and contrast was not necessary to Miss C., the multi¬ 
tude soon faded from sight, and left her alone. We wanted but your 
actual presence to have been completely happy that hour. We joined 
in regret tliat the world should have influences inauspicious to a person 
of such happy promise; that to live in its gayer scenes especially, and 
lose none of the refinements of sensibility and conscience, is a trial of 
excellence which gives benevolence a solicitude even for Miss C. 

A little while after this conversation the thought occurred of writing 
to you. But would not this be a strange action? would not some fan¬ 
tastic animal of the family of Don Quixote appear to Miss C.’s imagina¬ 
tion ? Yet why ? she will not deny my right to be interested in a cha¬ 
racter li.ke hers, wherever it is found, and to associate her image with 
those ideal forms of select individuals among whom I love to muse. 
Will not the admiration which I cannot refuse to rising excellence, 
though distant and personally unknown, entitle me to convey the ex- 




LETTERS. 


69 


pression of a wish, that escaping all eclipse, that excellence may be 
finished into full and permanent lustre? Yes! I/laie^a right to the 
pleasure of thinking of Miss C., of wishing she may be gTeatly happy, 
and of telling her so, though in this form of friendship without a name. 

The view of such <,n animated and strong character naturally leads to 
reflections on what are intimately allied to it—high principles and con¬ 
duct. 

If I should venture freely on to express some of these reflections to the 
persons at whose idea they rise, will she absolve nie ? will candor still 
wear her accustomed smile ? I hesitate; but I could not hesitate if I 
thought you would in any degree charge me with impertinence. A high 
opinion of your character alone could have suggested the thought of ad¬ 
dressing any such communications to you. An essential principle in a 
superior character is a refined self-respect, and I could not bear for a 
moment to hurt this delicate and honorable feeling. Formal lecture¬ 
looking presumption would not more incur than deserve your scorn. 
Believe me, INIadam, no mortal can detest more than I do, the part of an 
officious intruder with a world of pretended wisdom to spare. I abhor it. 
With so much intelligence and principle, you will of yourself be just to 
each subject of deep interest; but this is the very reason that tempts me 
to offer reflections on some of those subjects to you. I know the luxury 
of disclosing ideas to a mind who has ideas, of expatiating on some grand 
interest with a person who feels already all its inspiration. It is like 
planting a favorite flower amid a bed of still more beautiful flowers, in¬ 
stead of dooming it to droop or die among nettles, a fate very similar to 
that of aspiring sentiments when attempted to be imparted to trivial or 
degraded minds. I acknowledge ambition. Madam—the wish to obtain 
for some of my sentiments the honor of mingling with yours. I wish to 
enjoy the complacency of believing that for a little while a very interest¬ 
ing lady has thought with me, and perhaps has not been displeased. I 
felicitate you on possessing a mind of a superior order; what paltry, 
vulgar dust to this are those distinctions which the world holds out for 
its fools to adore—and they do adore ! Pagans ! 

Allow me to second your own views in the wish, that you may secure 
its utmost value, disclose all its energies, embrace all its felicities, 
strengthen it to the last possible degree of power. Let the mind assert 
an existence entire, active, and strong, a contrast to so many minds 
which we see glimmering and flitting on the brink of nothing. Let it 
command through the whole system of feeling and action with an ever- 
waking and mighty prevalence ; so that life may be to the utmost that 
is.possible, what it is a poor thing when it is not, the life of mind. Be 
the superior person, the dignified Caroline. You feel you can, therefore 
should, nay, will be. In the scene of mental pleasures and attain¬ 
ments, you will have the same advantages as a person of gigantic sta¬ 
ture in a grove of fruit-trees—an ability to reach the highest and the 
best; and here ability, right and duty, are the same. Nature, science 


70 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


morals, religion, these belong to you. You have power to enter anc. 
possess these* treasures; and if it were possible you would voluntarily 
shut yourself out, who would applaud the self-denial ? who but those 
whose applause and censure you would despise ? How slight to a 
vigorous mind, how insipid to hearts of sensibilit^ is the usual tenor of 
pursuits and intercourse among many of our acquaintance, among the 
younger part especially—among the ladies (I think I do not see Miss 
C. frown)—among the ladies emphatically. I appeal to you whether in¬ 
significance, frivolity, inanity, be not the word ? Is this the triumph of 
existence, the glory of being rational, the superiority of man over a 
butterfly ? I am not pleading for brown solemnity, the November habits 
of fourscore and a convent. No ! No ! No! I am pleading for the 
genuine voluptuousness of life. I am pleading that life may have some 
zest and poignancy infused by a mind acting with vivacity on subjects 
worthy of its energy. I am pleading that life may not be dissipated 
among trifles, till at last itself sicken into a tasteless trifle, with neither 
resources to be happy, nor courage to expire ! You, madam, were not 
designed for the common level, nor, I think, could often condescend to 
it, and be blameless ; but that level cannot be yours. “ A soul pregnant 
with celestial fire ” will disdain that little artificial spnere within which 
imbecility and folly have condemned themselves, and may invite you, to 
move. It will scorn to inhabit a painted egg-shell, and live on what 
commonly passes for pleasure. It feels attractions irresistible, the mag¬ 
netism of the sky. It will demand its own element. Let it rise! 

The divinest object is to be good. Pardon me, madam, I do not forget 
the pleasing fact that you are good ; only I am wishing that you may 
be signally so. In goodness, any elevation below the sublimest gratifies 
a noble spirit, not as a complacent resting-place, but as an approach to¬ 
wards the summit, and an omen of reaching it ere-while. A more than 
sufficient number will be content to inhabit the low ground of virtue, 
and Miss C. can well be spared to try the ascent to those elevated possi¬ 
bilities which she cannot have beheld with indifference. I trust your 
contempt is not less than mine, of the common notions, cant, and con¬ 
duct, of contented mediocrity. How much nobler is the generous dis¬ 
tress which, after weeping over conscious deficiency, l«ndles into en¬ 
thusiasm at the fair vision of perfect goodness, gilding a far-oflf view of 
future destiny! With that emotion we contemplate a great example, 
and eagerly adopt a brother or sister of the heart from the regions of 
death or poetry! But who shall convert the humble pleasure of admir¬ 
ing into the triumph of being such a character ? To a question like 
this. Miss C.’s feelings have often responded. 

There is one solemn rule of endless obligation, without pledging our¬ 
selves to which we are not numbered by the Eternal among his own 
great party of friends, selected through the creation ; viz. to accomplish 
both as to what we are, and what we do, all, absolutely, all the good we 
can; can, that is to say, by the combination of all our time, all our facul- 


LETTERS. 


71 


ties, and all the assistance which a gracious power above will impart. 
If, therefore, at any pitch of attainment or exertion we pause to ask, 
“ Is not this enough ?” and again, “ Will not this suffice ?” the answer 
is instant and invariable, “ Can you do no more ? Are you improving 
your time with a diligence which cannot, cannot be more intense ? Are 
you cultivating your heart and mind with a solicitude of wisdom not to 
be augmented ? Are you serving mankind with a Saviour’s benevolence, 
and God with a martyr’s zeal ?” Answer, O conscience ! thou canst 
tell! Rigid but sublime condition ! yet not rigid either, for goodness is 
not a task of superstition, and foreign to the great affair of happiness. 
To be good is to be happy. Angels are happier than mankind because 
they are better. 

“ What a glorious world !” I exclaim, as I look up to the alternate' 
clear effulgence and cloudy beauties of the sky, and then over all the 
vernal charms of the earth. How genuine, how innocent, are all these 
delightful visions ! “ Peace be to thee, candid nature, and thy scenes ! 

Thou art what thou appearest.” But this indeceptive disclosure of the 
reality of things does not prevail among the objects of human pursuit; 
for see the numbers who in quest of happiness are fatally deluded—de¬ 
luded surely, for they could never choose to be so miserable. 

It is unfortunate, in such a scene, to dare the experiment without the 
keen and watchful fire of an angel’s eye. Decree in the outset, dear 
madam, that you will not be imposed upon. As the fair forms that pro¬ 
mise happiness and joy approach you and invite your attention with 
smiles, arrest them and compel them within the circle where truth com¬ 
bats enchantment. How many will you send deformed away ! Be re¬ 
solute ! Pluck away every mask and veil! Look at them with the 
mind’s full force ; examine them sternly, as Rhadamanthus judging the 
departed spirits. Exert this keen inquisition on everything—your habits, 
your friends, your engagements, and whatever is important to you. Re¬ 
peat, that you will not be imposed on; ascertain the fact, grasp the 
reality. Ask, “ What good ? what tendency ? what price ? what dura¬ 
tion ?” Ask, and pause. Determine to extort the reply of truth. Oh, 
do not relent! a judge or a captive ! The hour of trial must precede 
the hour of felicity. Remember that each delusive appearance may 
conceal a fountain of some deadly element, which the unfortunate per¬ 
son that examines not but confides, may soon perceive to open, and pour 
a Stygian stream over the whole of life. Remember that each delusion 
must ultimately fly ; how happy then, to anticipate the hour of revela¬ 
tion, and leave as little as possible to be taught by grim experience, with 
her execrable lesson in black print! Thus, while so many are doomed 
to wake from the dreams of vanishing delight, may you possess “ the 
sober certainty of waking blissand may your felicities, as they bloom 
and aspire, embrace the column of eternity, and live for ever ! Instruc¬ 
tion, with its detail of cautions, is not for you. A friendly voice will 
not say to you, “ Avoid this and the other; do not condescend to the 


72 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


petty clicking of cards ; do not waste your time, and the dear, delightful 
luxuries of a sentimental breast, in those modish groups of company 
where Miss C. or where Minerva would appear, and act with no supe¬ 
riority over a pretty fool.” No ; you will sit in judgment yourself, and 
act from a decision all your owm. You are able, you are worthy; do 
not forget a judge’s deliberation. 

The friends of virtue are pledged by that friendship to an incessant 
hostility against folly in all its forms. You have determined, therefore, 
what kind of regard may be due to some of the caprices of fashion, and 
to all its slaves ; to mere beaux and belles; to the vain pomp of wealth 
and rank, parading to the vulgar gaze, in the laughable notion that to 
look big is to be great; to what may be called the cant of gentility, minc¬ 
ing, in affected phrases, through all its varieties of insignihcance ; and to 
the tribe of occupations and insect amusement (alas ! Hies about a dead 
body!) which engage so many of the circles of what is called “ polished 
society.” Smite some of these forms of folly with an ardent beam of 
your mind, and they will fade before you like Hamlet’s ghost at the 
crowing of the cock. 

Against all these virtue expresses unalterable antipathy, and shall her 
accomplished votary, her Caroline, do less ? Folly meanwhile may 
wonder w'hy you should not graciously smile. It belongs to a virtuous 
spirit to assert an independence of character, a power of self-direction, 
and to scorn and violate custom, and everything else that opposes its 
sublime principles. Despicable is an atom character, carried along with 
the mass,—a human bubble, impotent to move an inch against the 
stream. You are a person not to be led, but to lead ; your mental vigor 
will frequently give you an ascendency among those you may associate 
with, and benevolence wall point it to its noblest use ; can you imagine 
to yourself a pleasure more emphatic than to enlighten and meliorate ? 
Reflect on the serious discipline and momentous value of life; reflect 
that life itself will come to an end. These thoughts will take away 
much from gaiety; these deductions ought to be made. The claims are 
such as we are not likely to refuse ; what remains will be legitimate. 

I know how ungracious an offering such a letter as this would be to 
many young ladies; some would call it impertinent; some fantastic, and 
very many insufferably serious. “ The ghost of Cato !” they would 
exclaim, and recoil. In saying this I am not assuming that you must 
of course necessarily approve ; yet I have addressed these ideas to you 
in the persuasion that they would not be unwelcome, though they could 
not be necessary. If they were necessary, I know they would not be 
acceptable. “ And if not necessary,” perhaps you wull say, “ w’hy, after 
all, do you write ?” Can you not then, madam, be kind to the ambition 
I mentioned before ? 

While I indulge with pleasure and pride the thought of revolving 
sentiments with Miss C. rather than for her, another thought tells me 
that it is not exactly thus that her sentiments would have flowed, and 


LETTERS. 


73 


not exactly thus she would have communicated them to a person for 
whom she meant to express her high complacency and respect. She 
would have infused a certain engaging spirit through all that would have 
charmed away the possibility of offence, and made an intrusion ever 
dear to memory. 

Well, madam, but do accept the intentions of this strange letter, 
from a person who wonders that a sympathetic interest in excellence, 
though unseen, should be strange.* 


XXIX. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Chichester, April 29, 1799. 

My dear Friend, —Some days spent from home have combined with 
other circumstances to delay what ought to have been an immediate 
answer to your last. My acknowledgments are due for the service 
rendered me in waiting on Mr. Wathen, and transmitting his advice. 
It will be followed,—not indeed witliout a strong suspicion that there is 
some disorder in the globe of the eye, to which this treatment alone 
will not reach. I now see, or fancy, a slight amendment in the lids. 
For the greater part of the time since I wrote, the eyes altogether have 
been in a state somewhat more favorable in respect of feeling, than I 
then described. That any progress has been made towards removing 
the principal cause of disorder, whatever it may be, I can scarcely allow 
myself to hope. My wishes join with yours, that this and every other 
painful visitation may have a purifying effect. 

Lately I have felt a degree of gratitude which 1 had before scarcely 
believed possible, for the discipline of suffering, while a merciful hand 
applies it to correct the mind. 

I proceed to the substance of your letter. I shall not conceal that the 
Jirst impression was much of the painful kind. I said to myself, walk¬ 
ing pensively in a field, Here, while I speak of the miseries of human 
guilt and impotence, assert the inanity of human merits, and the pre- 
sunrptuous impiety of reposing in any degree on self —while I refer 
everything to divine grace, assert the infinite value of the Saviour, say 
that he is ‘ all in all,’ exhibit him as the blessed and only hope of the 
world—I encounter a cold and discordant sympathy among the principal 
persons of the connexion. I am called Calvinistic, Methodistic, and 
cast out of the synagogue. I address myself to minds of happier light, 
whose intelligence I admire, whose piety I love, and they see nothing in 
the emotions which have prompted my sighs, my prayers, my ardent 
hopes, more than the illusions of imagination, but thinly and partially 
concealing an ‘ enmity against God,’ which still lies black and irnmove- 

* “ The consumptive complaint of which this young lady died, at the 
age of twenty-one, has in two or three years carried off her mother and 
six sisters.”— JV’ote by Mr. Foster. 



/ 


74 LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 

able at the foundation of all! ’Tis thus I am for ever repelled from 
every point of religious confraternity, and doomed, still doomed, a me¬ 
lancholy monad, a weeping solitaire. Oh world ! how from thy emry 
quarter blows a gale, wintry, cold, and bleak, to the heart that would 
expand!” 

These were the feelings of the instant; but I soon recovered calmness 
enough to recognize the faithful friend in the sharp inquisitor, and to 
thank him both for his benevolence and for the mode of evincing it. 
Had he discovered less penetration or less faithfulness, I should have 
respected him less. I am constrained to feel you are worthy to be my 
Preceptor still; and, while I hope to extract some good from every one, 

I trust to receive it in copious communications from you. 

Perhaps it may be salutary for myself to entertain some of the same 
apprehensions which you have expressed, and certainly a severe in¬ 
vestigation of the state of my mind discloses so much that is unworthy, 
or equivocal, as to warrant suspicion to extend still further than 
I see. 

I know it too well, that for a long course of time, during which I 
have felt an awful regard for religion, my mind has not been under the 
full, immediate impression of its most interesting character, the most 
gracious of its influences, its evangelic beams. I have not with open 
face beheld the transforming glory of the Lord.” I have, as it were, 
worshipped in the outer courts of the temple, and not habitually dwelt 
in that sacred recess where the God of love reveals all himself, in Jesus 
Christ. And is it difficult to conceive, that in aspiring and advancing 
towards a better state, I may be accompanied for a while by some mea¬ 
sure of the defects and the shades contracted in that gloomy sojourn, 
which I must for ever deplore ? 

It is much to affirm, and I think I may with great confidence affirm, 
that all my cherislied, warmest desires and intentions are consonant to 
the pure evangelic standard. May I not allege it as some proof of this, 
that I at present wish to commit myself to the full extent of the aposto¬ 
lic profession ; nay, more, that I do habitually commit myself here, at 
the expense of the feelings which regard the coincidence or opposition 
of those I am connected with ? 

You doubt whether my heart has really given the fulness of its affec¬ 
tion to the Saviour. As far as my heart itself feels this doubt, it is filled 
with trembling; it assuredly can never rest till- no doubt on the subject 
remains. 

But which of the principles of that devotion are wanting ? Certainly 
none of the solemn reasons of it are wanting, and none, I think, unfelt. 
Whatever is appalling in the aspect of the king of terrors, whatever is 
affecting in the welfare and prospects of a soul guilty, immortal, and 
my own; all that is interesting in the pursuit of happiness, that is com¬ 
manding in the opening visions of Eternity, or awful in the contemplation 
pf God the Judge,—all these concur with the infinite worthiness of that 


LETTERS. 


75 


Saviour, to constrain me into the sacred union, and to seal it. Can a 
more urgent and immense interest, can stronger bonds, make him the 
Lord of my heart or of yours ? Are these not precisely the reasons 
why he should be dear? Yes, he stands forward to my view in a most 
momentous connexion with all these; and in whatever degree these 
mighty objects are affecting to me, in that degree he is become estimable 
and beloved. 

But you fear I do not fully meet the most important office and cha¬ 
racter of the Saviour, that of a deliverer from the miseries of sin ; that 
I do not receive Jesus in the deep abasement of conscious guilt. Per¬ 
haps you imagine me approaching him in the spirit of one who should 
say, “ I have sat in judgment on thy claims, and I find that thou art 
worthy that I should he thy friend; I choose, therefore, to wear the honoi's 
of thy cause, and rank among thy dignified followers.” Indeed you are 
mistaken. It is at the audit of conscience, while guilt weighs heavy on 
my heart, that I learn the true and unspeakable value of a Redeemer. 
But I have ever felt this internal world of iniquity, and the endless griefs 
that accompany it, a mournful theme. Surely I might have been ex¬ 
cused, though I did not disclose in detail all the sentiments that excru¬ 
ciate or melt a soul, contemplating and lamenting its deep depravity and 
aggravated guilt. I might have been forgiven a reluctance to expatiate 
on the subject as 'personal to myself before any being but Him only 
who can pardon. Is it not enough that I am awfully sensible how pre¬ 
sumptuous and hopeless this advance to//im would be, without a frequent 
reference to the work of Jesus Christ ? 

Why would my friend attribute the confidence with which I have ex¬ 
pressed my intentions and expectations to a vain self-sufficiency, when 
it could be assigned to a much more generous the force of resistless 

conviction ? It is impossible to feel what I sometimes feel, and not in¬ 
dulge at the time (inconsiderately, it may be) a persuasion, that the 
effect of such emotions 7nust be eternal. “ My heart presumes it cannot 
lose. The relish all my days.” I scarcely ever read the New Testa¬ 
ment without feeling all that I now describe ; and I love to cherish this 
ardor. Indeed this enthusiasm often subsides into the recollection of 
'past ardors, convictions, confidence, hopes, and their fate! I then won¬ 
der I can ever indulge confidence again. But again it swells and rises 
—and should it not rise ?—at the view of that gracious economy of 
divine influences and strength from heaven which Jesus has proclaimed 
and still administers. I am verily persuaded that no man embraces 
this part of the Gospel with a firmer belief or a warmer joy than I do. 
I sojemnly aver that all my habitual confidence, as to what I shall be¬ 
come or accomplish, rests exclusively here. The alternative is such a 
hope, or flat despair. 

“ Mortifications, censures, injustice, failures, await the Christian 
zealot.” Yes, it is impossible I can have observed the world so long, 
and not be apprised of it all. I perceive the thorns and briars tangled 


76 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


across his path, and—to fill up the picture—the spiders that harbor 
among them—the causes of disgust added to the causes of pain. The 
most sanguine fires of zeal and benevolence should not, and cannot 
long delude his judgment out of the. certain, sad, and permanent estirr ate 
of mankind. Human society, compounded as it is with ignorance, pre¬ 
judice, and conceit, furnishes ungracious materials to work upon. It 
is but to a comparative few that the Christian missionary can hope to 
be useful. Melancthon soon had cause to “ smile in bitterness ” at his 
fond youthful expectations of convincing and reforming all mankind. 
There are many whom, as Dr. Young says, “you cannot love but for 
the Almighty’s sake.” Oh, what a humiliation of all that was aspiring, 
what a blast of all that was tender, have I sometimes experienced on 
making the transition from the exaltation of prayer, and the fervors of 
charity in the closet, to the praxis —in the actual sight and intercourse 
of mankind. A reflecting man’s expectations will indeed be moderate, 
and it will be difficult for him to combine with his zeal and efforts that 
enthusiasm which is forbidden to mingle its fire with his hopes. But 
what then ? What happy energy has sustained and impelled Watts and 
Doddridge? What energy does fire Pearce, Hinton, or yourself? And 
cannot I be kept constant to the righteous cause by the voice of the 
Eternal ? Cannot I feel the solemn claims of a duty that leaves me no 
choice ? Cannot I consider Him who endured the contradiction of 
sinners against himself ? Cannot I have respect to the recompense of 
reward ? As to “ disappointment in the expectation of applause,” as to 
“ the sacrifice of philosophic fame,” if you will believe me, I hold these 
considerations very light. I have lately thought on this subject in¬ 
tensely, and not in vain. Philosophy itself unites with religion to pour 
an utter contempt on the passion for fame. I have been laboring a 
good while to fix my mind firmly on this principle—namely, to persist 
in what I judge the most excellent, resolutely, zealously, and unaltera¬ 
bly, and only for unalterable reasons^ and then regard neither praise nor 
censure, admiration nor contempt, caresses nor abuse, any otherwise 
than as they may affect my power of doing good. 

There is great force in your remarks on the deceptions of imagination. 
A strong imagination, expanding and sweeping over ages and worlds in 
quest of grandeur, will exult in the sight of whatever is great in any de¬ 
partment of contemplation, as well the evangelic as any other. It will 
hail it as an object of taste. It will revel in a sublime romance of reli¬ 
gion. It will admire the character of Jesus, and some of the Christian 
truths and prospects, as magnificent objects, analogous to the heavenly 
bodies, and stupendous phenomena in the physical universe. These 
feelings may exist where they do not evince, nor form any part of the 
influences of, a divine spirit pervading the soul and making it evangelic 
and heavenly. This is what you mean; I believe it is too true. But 
what then is the criterion to ascertain the nature of these fervors in 
given case ? The proof will be found in the consistency or ineem- 


LETTERS. 


77 


sistency of these feelings with the other movements of the mind, and in 
their consequences. Let Rousseau be the instance. In his eloquent 
praise of Christianity, taken by itself, you will hardly detect a proof that 
it is not dictated by a piety sublime as his genius. Ask then. Does 
Rousseau zealously endeavor to establish all the proofs of Christianity ? 
Does Rousseau reverently submit his genius and his philosophic specula¬ 
tions to its authority ? Does Rousseau receive with equal pleasure the 
abasing, as the elevating, truths of Christianity ? Does he, as a guilty 
being, rejoice in Christ chiefly as a Saviour ? Can he despise philosophic 
fame for the sake of Christ ? Does he zealously proclaim him to his 
brethren ? Is he sensible of the excellence of the Christian consolations ? 
Does he pray fervently ? Does he deny himself and take up his cross ? 
Are his morals reformed ? These would prove him a Christian, and his 
eloquence would be that of an apostle. ’Tis matter of never-ending re¬ 
gret that Rousseau’s character will not bear such a process of trial. I 
am not claiming any kindred to his sublime genius while I bring myself 
to the touchstone, and say, “A glow of imagination;”—but certainly 
that is not all.. The gospel is to me, not a matter of complacent specu¬ 
lation only, but of momentous use, of urgent necessity. I come to Jesus 
Christ because I need pardon, and purification, and strength. I feel 
more abased, as he appears more divine. In the dust I listen to his in¬ 
structions and commands. I pray fervently in his name, and above all 
things for a happy union with him. I do, and will proclaim him. For 
his sake I am willing to go through evil report and good report. I wish 
to live and die in his service. 

Is not this some resemblance of “ the simplicity of the fishermen,” on 
which you insist with emphasis ? This spirit, my dear friend, is in a 
certain degree,—to be, I trust, divinely augmented,—assuredly mine. 
The Galilean faith has gained the ascendant, and I anticipate, though 
with humility and intervals of fear, everything happy from its influence. 
The tide of my mind is really turned, and though it has not yet mounted 
the desired height, I trust I cannot be mistaken as to its direction. 

The hint in your letter respecting scripture diction, was, I remember, 
in your conversation, a direct accusation of my being philosophically 
reluctant or ashamed to employ it. No charge was ever more unjust. 
I acknowledge the defect, but the reason of it is a memory which I can 
never trust to attempt verbal citations from any book, unless either I 
have time for recollection, or have the passage written before me; nay, 
the reason is anything rather than the one you have surmised. 

Thus far I have written, and with more prolixity than I intended ; 
somewhat in character of client to my pen. But after all, my capital 
concern is, not to defend what I am, but to be what I ought to be. If 
some of the evils you have suggested do still adhere to me, my most 
ardent prayer is for their removal. Will not yours be added ? Mean¬ 
while both my feelings and a strong conviction of duty irrvpel me towards 
action. The reflection on the inutility to which I have been doomed so 


78 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


long, often starts into anguish. I cannot divest myself of the persuasion 
that I belong to some popular and useful sphere. Will my much re¬ 
spected friend assist me ? Will not you take me by the hand ? will you 
not meet with a brother’s cordiality a returning wanderer ? Can the 
gracious spirit of the Christian cause move its advocate rather to repel 
associates than invite ? Methinks a disciple of Jesus would say, “ He 
that is not against us, is for us.” Methinks while he would animadvert 
with faithfulness on every defect, he yet would zealously urge forward 
the general effect. Methinks he would wish a convalescent religionist 
placed amid the most salubrious air. But I am checked,—I am 
chilled. Was not your letter meant to tell me that you would not incur 
any responsibility on the subject ? This was one of my ideas in the 
first impression, and I am not now certain of the contrary. It is of 
pressing consequence that I should know. Of my engagement here, 
only one month remains. I cannot regret its termination ;—it is a Cim¬ 
merian sojourn. Do not accuse me, my dear friend ; do not require that 
I should work miracles. A most uncommon combination of circum¬ 
stances renders it almost hopeless that any man can be of much service 
here. I have not written to any person but yourself on the subject of 
another situation. I ought to consider you as a favorable specimen of 
what I might expect in the evangelic connection ; if you, therefore, re¬ 
fuse your countenance, it will be in vain to apply to any other. Then 
the sweet hopes of an useful happiness, which have revived with so much 
ardor, would have bloomed but again to die ! Well; it would be but 
one more in the sable train of disappointments. My destiny is in the 
hands of a good, but mysterious Being. Let it be accomplished ! 

Affectionately yours, 

J. Foster. 


XXX. TO AN UNKNOWN LADY.* 

About Midsummer, 1790. 

I SHOULD not venture a momentary interruption of feelings which I 
know must choose the pensive retirement of the heart, if I did not hope 
to insinuate a sentiment or two, not discordant with the tone of grief. 

I am willing to believe the interest I have taken in your happiness, 
will authorize me to convey to you, at such a serious hour, the expres¬ 
sion of a friendly and solicitous sympathy. I am willing to believe, that 
the sincere respect with which I have addressed you in serener days,f 
will be a pledge to you, that, in assuming such a liberty, I cannot forget 
the delicacy of respect which peculiarly belongs to you, now you are in 

* “ The person to whom this was addressed vras, the writer believes, in 
health at the time this was written, but died a few months afterwards. 
She received it a few weeks after the death of one very near relative, and 
when another was each day expected to die .”—JVote by Mr. Foster. 

t Letter XXVIII. 



LETTERS. 


79 


a scene of suffering; and that this little attention which I seem to my¬ 
self to owe you, will not be deemed to violate the sacredness of sorrow. 

I should be most happy, if it were possible for me to impart any 
influences that could alleviate the oppressions of the heart, or aid your 
fortitude in its severe probation. But I dare not indulge so pleasing a hope. 
I know too well that suffering clings to tl^e sufferer’s self; and that any 
other mind, though actuated by the jcindest wishes, is still a foreign mind, 
and inhabits a separate sphere, from which it can but faintly breathe 
consoling sentiments. 

Yet, doubtless, there are in existence truths of sweet and mighty 
inspiration, which, j;erfectly applied, would calm your feelings, and 
irradiate the gloom around you. How happy were the art to steal such 
fire from heaven! IIow much I wish it yours ! Yes, and there are 
softenings of distress, glimpses of serenity, ideas of tender enthusiasm, 
firm principles, sublime aspirings, to mingle wdth the feelings of the good 
in every situation. I love to assure myself these are not w’anting to you. 
I hope they will prolong the benignant charm of their visitation, and be 
at intervals closer to your heart than even the causes of sadness that 
environ you. 

You will not. Miss C., disdain the solicitude'of a sincere friend, who is 
interested for you while you are suffering, and loves the sensibility of which 
he regrets he cannot beguile the pain. I think I would be willing to 
feel for a season all that you feel, in order to acquire an entire and poig¬ 
nant sympathy. This alone can convey the exquisite significance, the 
magic of soul, into the suggestions that seek to revive the depressed 
energy of a tender heart. I would exert the w'hole efficacy of a mind 
thus painfully instructed to soothe or to animate; I would look around 
for every truth and every hope to wdiich heaven has imparted sweetness, 
for the sake of minds in grief; I w^ould invoke wdiatever friendly spirit 
has power to shed balm on anxious or desponding cares, and unobserved, 
steal a part of the bitterness away; I would also attempt a train of 
vigorous thinking; I would not despair of some advantage from the 
application of reasoning. Indeed it is knowm too well, there are moments 
when the heart refuses all control, and gives itself without reserve to 
grief. It feels, and even cherishes emotions which it cannot yield up to 
any power less than that of heaven or of time. Arguments may vainly, 
sometimes, forbid the tears that flow for the affecting events of remem¬ 
brance or anticipation. Arguments will not obliterate scenes whose 
every circumstance pierced the heart. Arguments cannot recall the 
victims of death. Dear affections !—the sources of felicity, the charm 
of life,—what pangs too they can cause! You have loved sensibility, 
you have cultivated it, and you are destined yet, I hope, to obtain many 
of its sweetest pleasures; but you see how much it must sometimes cost 
you. Contemn, as it deserves, the pride of stoicism ; but still there are 
the most cogent reasons why sorrow should somewhere be restrained. 
It should acknowledge the limits imposed by judgment and the will of 


80 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


Heaven. Do not yield your mind to the gloomy extinction of utter 
despondency. It still retains the most dear and valuable interests, which 
require to be saved from the sacrifice. Before the present circumstances 
took place, the wish of friendship would have been, that you might be 
long happily exempted from tliem; now it is that you may gain from 
them as high an improvement and a triumph as ever an excellent mind 
won from t°ial. From you an example may be expected of the manner 
in which a virtuous and thoughtful person has learnt to bear the melan¬ 
choly events of life. Even at such a season it is not a duty to abandon 
the study of happiness. Do not altogether turn away from sweet hope 
with her promises and smiles. Do not refuse to believe that this dark 
cloud will pass away, and the heavens shine again ; that happier dap 
will compensate these hours that move in sadness. Grief will have its 
share—a painful share ; but grief will not have your all, Caroline. 
There is good in existence still,—rich, various, endless,—the pursuit of 
wliich will elevate, and the attainment of which will crown you. Even 
your present emotions are the distresses of tender melancholy : how 
widely different from the anguish of guilt! Yours are such tears as 
innocence may shed, and intermingled smiles—pensive smiles, indeed, 
and transient, but expressive of a sentiment that rises toward heaven. 

The most pathetic energies of consolation can be imparted by religion 
alone, the never-dying principle of all that is happy in the creation. 
The firm persuasion that all things that concern us are completely every 
moment in the hands of our Father above, infinitely wise and merciful; 
that he disposes all these events in the best possible manner; and that 
we shall one day bless him amid the ardors of infinite gratitude for even 
his most distressing visitations ;—such a sublime persuasion will make 
the heart and tlie character sublime. It will enable you to assemble all 
your interests together ; your wishes, your prospects, your sorrows, and 
the circumstances of the persons that are dear to you, and present them 
in one devout ofiering to the best Father, the greatest Friend ; and it 
will assure you of being in every scene of life the object of his kind, per¬ 
petual care. 

Permit me, madam, to add, that one of the most powerful means 
towards preserving a vigorous tone of mind in unhappy circumstances, 
is to explore with a resolute eye the serious lessons which they teach. 
Events like those which you have beheld, open the inmost temple of 
solemn truth, and throw around the very blaze of revelation. In such a 
school, such a mind may make incalculable improvements. I consider a 
scene of death as being to the interested parties who witness it, a kind 
of sacrament, inconceivably solemn, at which they are summoned by the 
voice of heaven, to pledge themselves in vows of irreversible decision. 
Here then, Caroline, as at the high altar of eternity, you have been called 
to pronounce, if I may express it so, the iniiolahle oath; to keep for ever 
in view the momentous value of life, and to aim at its worthiest use, its 
sublimest end; to spurn with a last disdain, those foolish trifles, those 


LETTERS. 


81 


frivolous vanities, which so generally within our sight consume life, as 
the locusts did Egypt; and to devote yourself with the ardor of passion 
to attain the most divine improvements of the human soul; and in short, 
to hold yourself in preparation to make that interesting transition to 
another life, whenever you shall be claimed by the Lord of the World. 


XXXI. TO MRS. R. MANT. 

Battersea, July 23, 1799. 

My dear Friend, —Allow me to tell you that the varieties, the 
pleasures, or the mortifications of a sojourn in the busy world will never 
obliterate the remembrance of the most meritorious individual I met with 
in Chichester. In the short space that has elapsed, I have often thought 
of you. I have fancied to myself your mode of life, your walks in the 
fields, and your visits to your cousins. But however, when one experi¬ 
ences any change in respect to one’s self, one is ready to imagine some 
change in every thing and person one knows, so that, if I were to revisit 
Chichester, one of the first inquiries of my eyes and my voice would be 
after changes. Though I have been absent but three or four weeks, I 
should ask, “ What! are you quite the same kind of person ?” “ Is the 

circle of acquaintance the same ?” “ Is Watery Lane the same ?” 
“ The meeting just as it was ?” “ The General Baptists quite the 
same ?” “ The room I slept in, and all the pictures the same ?” I 

know at least that I am too much the same. Oh! I pant for a grand 
revolution in all my soul and character. I wish for a sacred zeal, for 
devotional habits, and an useful life. How defective in all these while 
at Chichester! Conscience often told me, that though the situation was 
indeed unfavorable, yet no small part of the fault was in myself. I still 
feel, and shall ever feel, the regret of not having made those vigorous 
exertions which I might have made, and which, if made, might perhaps 
have had some considerable effect. I have almost wished sometimes, that 
I could have been there a season longer to make some kind of atonement 
to myself and the people. But the past is irrevocable. I hope the dis¬ 
approbation with which I review it, will be an incentive, a strong 
incentive to a noble course hereafter. I have nothing particular to tell 

you.You will wonder that I have not yet been in London, though 

I am within four miles of it, and see St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey 

in the distance every day.It will be a great gratification if you 

will write to me soon, and copiously and carelessly as you would talk. 
I entreat you do not write it twice over, as you sometimes do; ’tis 

unnecessary, and it makes writing a serious labor.Cultivate 

religion—confide in the unalterable goodness of a heavenly Father—rejoice 
in Jesus Christ, and remember me in your prayers—you are not forgotten 
in mine. Yours, with most friendly regard, J. Foster.* 

*■ “ May 1, 1797, Mr. Foster came to my house to live.—June 2S, 1799, 

7 




82 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


XXXII. TO BIRS. R. MANT. 

^ Battersea^ Bee. 31 , 1799 . 

.... I have been occupied a great part of my time, and lazy the 
rest; but never forgetful of the kindness I experienced, and the number¬ 
less pleasant hours which I spent in your house, and which claim a 
perpetual remembrance. I have very often wished to know and intended 
writing immediately to ask, how you are as to health, prospects, engage¬ 
ments, and society. How many thousand things we should have said, 
wished, debated; how many books we should have glanced into; how 
many living characters we should have examined, and admired or con¬ 
demned ; how many adventures we should have had, or recalled, or 
dreamed, if we had passed the last six months, like the former ones, in 
the same abode. However, though at a distance, and knowing nothing 
of each other’s course, I trust the time has not been passed by either 
without some improvement. My sojourn here has been rich in lessons 
of various kinds ; and this last day of the year calls me with a solemn, 
with, as it were, an expiring voice, to take an account of what has been 
accomplished in my heart and in my life, during the year that is gone, 
and through all the time that has passed by me never to be recalled. I 
feel it must be a mortifying and penitential account; how neglected have 
been the talents, how waste the precious hours,, how little the good 
imparted to others ! how cold the devotion ascending—scarce ascending, 
to heaven ! My soul looks with most painful regret on various scenes 
of the past, and particularly on the negligent, spiritless, and unevangeli¬ 
cal strain of my public ministrations at Chichester. I do not know 
whether it was possible to have done great good; but it certainly was 
possible to have zealously attempted it, and in this I greatly failed. I 
hope such recollections will have tlie effect to stimulate all my future 
efforts, and thus derive to me a valuable advantage, even from the guilty 
remissness of the past. Let us both preach*to ourselves with all our 
might; let us say with a distinguished and devout hero, on the eve of a 
battle, “Perhaps I cannot inspire a generous ardor into those around me, 
but at least I will make sure of orie.” Let us pray fervently ; let us read 
the book of God; let us embrace the salvation of Christ; let us exhort 
our friends to go to heaven; let us lead and show the way. There is 
a God of love ; our sins can be pardoned through the sacrifice of the 
Redeemer; there is a Holy Spirit to guide us, a Providence to watch 
over us, and palms at last for the hands of conquerors of this sinful world 
to wear. What a glorious prospect then before us ! Adieu to vanity ; 
adieu to sloth ; adieu to all unchristian fears, distrustful of the care and 
the strength of our blessed Father above. “ Be thou faithful unto death, 
and I will give thee a crown of life.” 


Mr. Foster went away to Battersea; he lived with me two years.—Decem¬ 
ber 20, 1800, Mr. Foster paid us a friendly visit for a week.”— Mrs. Mant 


LETTERS. 


83 


I cordially sympathize with you in regard to that desolation of society 
and friendship to which you seem to be doomed. I wish some agreeable 
acquisitions of this kind may illuminate the pensive shade ; but if not, is 
it not a gracious hand that has marked your destiny ? Wait, then, till 
you sec it accomplished, when unquestionably you will discover, with an 
exultation of gratitude and joy, that “ all things have been done well.” 
The friendliest wish I can form for you is, that the less you enjoy of 
worldly felicities, the more you may obtain of the divine; that if God 
withholds Irom you any of his created blessings, it may be to give you 
more abundantly Himself; in short, that ‘‘the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ may be with you.” Oh, it is happy to be entirely resigned to the 
will of God ; willing to travel by any path his wisdom appoints, through 
the vale of life and tears ; or at one word, when he shall call, to haste 
away with willing flight into his presence, to mingle with the sweet and 
endless society there. “ In his^resence is fulness of joy, and at his right 
hand are pleasures for evermore.” .... 


XXXIII. TO THE REV. DR. I'AWCETT. 

Battersea^ Jan. 1 . 5 , 1800 . 

Dear Sir,— The pleasure with which I address one of my earliest and 
best benefactors, is mingled with a painful regret for having disappointed 
any of his hopes ; but is mingled too with a reviving confidence that it 
will not be a final disappointment. As a proof that the unfortunate 
wanderer has not lost entirely his interest in your friendly regards, your 
letter was extremely grateful to me. But what shall I say of the long 
time that has passed without an acknowledgment from me of a favor so 
little expected, and cordial to my feelings as one of the days of returning 
spring ? It were vain to attempt apology. I could plead only that each 
successive week I have intended to write to you, but that a certain 
fatality of procrastination, to which I have long been subjected in res¬ 
pect of writing, has prevailed over me here too. It is more manly to 
confess than to extenuate. Tet it grieves me much that appearances 
do warrant an imputation of such ingratitude as I am certain I can 
never feel; and I v/ill entreat you, dear sir, to lay aside in this one case 
the ancient rule of judging of the heart by the conduct. The sincere, 
unalterable respect with which I always think of you, assures my own 
mind that I have some claim to such an exception. I am very sorry for 
the conduct which leaves my assertion to stand the solitary testimony in 
my/avor. Memory often recalls, with a sentiment of pensive but grate¬ 
ful interest, the season of my life which was passed under your immediate 
care ; and those instructions, those kind anxieties, those prayers, and that 
example, of which the effect, I trust, cannot be lost to the latest moment 
of my life, no, nor in that eternity beyond. Will you accept from even 
me the wish that your cares may not fail of a happy success, and an 



84 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


abundant reward ? But of their reward they cannot fail; that is indepen* 
dent even of* their success ; it will be conferred by Him who knows and 
approves the hearts of his faithful servants, while sometimes his wisdom 
denies to their efforts the desired effect. 

I receive with pleasure, but not without diffidence of myself, your 
congratulations on a happy revolution of my views and feelings. Oh, 
with what profound regret I review a number of inestimable years nearly 
lost to my own happiness, to social utility, and to the cause and king¬ 
dom of Christ! I often feel like one who should suddenly awake to 
amazement and alarm, on the brink of a gloomy gulf. I am scarcely 
able to retrace exactly through the mingled dreary shades of the past, 
the train of circumstances and influences which have led me so far 
astray; but amid solemn reflection, the conviction has flashed upon me 
irresistibly, that I must be fatally wrong. This mournful truth has 
indeed many times partially reached me,before, but never so decisively, 
nor to awaken so earnest a desire for the full, genuine spirit of a disciple 
of Jesus. I see clearly that my strain of thinking and preaching has 
not been pervaded and animated by the evangelic sentiment, nor, conse¬ 
quently, accompanied by the power of the gospel, either to myself or to 
others. I have not come forward in the spirit of Paul, or Peter, or 
John ; have not counted all things but loss that I might win Christ and 
be found in him. It is true indeed that this kind of sentiment, when 
strongly presented, has always appealed powerfully to both my judgment 
and my heart; I have yielded my whole assent to its truth and excel¬ 
lence, and often longed to feel its heavenly inspiration ; but some malady 
of the soul has still defeated these better emotions, and occasioned a 
mournful relapse into coldness of feeling, and sceptical or unprofitable 
speculation. I wonder as I reflect;—I am amazed how indifference and 
darkness could return over a mind which had seen such gleams of 
heaven. I hope that mighty grace will henceforward for ever save me 
from such infelicity. My habitual affections, however, are still much 
below the pitch that I desire. I wish above all things to have a con¬ 
tinual, most solemn impression of the absolute need of the free salvation 
of Christ for my own soul, and to have a lively faith in him, accompa¬ 
nied with all the sentiments of patience, humility, and love. I would be 
transformed,—fired with holy zeal; and henceforth live not to myself, 
but to Him that died and rose again. My utmost wish is to be a minor 
apostle; to be a humble, but active, devoted and heroic servant of Jesus 
Christ; and in such a character and course, to minister to the eternal 
happiness of those within my sphere. My opinions are in substance 
decisively Calvinistic. I am firmly convinced, for instance, of the doc¬ 
trines of original sin, predestination, imputed righteousness, the neces¬ 
sity of the Holy Spirit’s operation to convert the mind, final persever¬ 
ance, &c., &c. 

As to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, I do not deny that I had 
once some degree of doubt, but not such a degree ever as to carry me 


LETTERS. 


85 


anything near the adoption of an opposite or different opinion. It was 
by no means disbelief; it was rather a hesitation to decide, and without 
much, I think, of the vanity of speculation. But for a long while past 
I have fully felt the necessity of dismissing subtle speculations and dis¬ 
tinctions, and of yielding a humble, cordial assent to the mysterious 
truth, just as and because the scriptures declare it, without inquiring 
“ How can these things be ?” Even at the time I refer to, I had not the 
slightest doubt respecting the doctrine of the atonement. I have always, 
without the interval of a moment, deemed it a grand essential of Chris¬ 
tianity. How still more emphatically welcome it becomes as one dis¬ 
covers more of one’s own heart! I deem it probable that my views on 
this and other subjects were invidiously misrepresented to you and some 
more of my friends. I have witnessed in many instances, with a dis¬ 
gusting recoiling of the heart, an astonishing promptitude to impute 
heresy to a man whose expressions have varied from the common phrase¬ 
ology, or whose conclusions have been cautious, and not in the tone of 
infallibility. 

Within the last year I have drawn from experiment, example, and 
reflection, very important lessons respecting the best manner of preach¬ 
ing, as to diction, elocution, kind of illustrations, introduction or rejec¬ 
tion of humorous ideas, &c. The altogether of the manner I would 
choose, if I could seize it all at once, would be very different from my 
former style. From unfavorable habits of mind, and inauspicious public 
situations for the most part, I have acquired a disadvantageous elocu¬ 
tion, which I fear will cost me considerable pains to correct. I have 
felt this particularly in my occasional public services about London, in 
which I have not in general felt free and happy, except in the missionary 
preaching in the villages, in which I have frequently been engaged. I 
have been so much occupied with the Africans since I came hither, and 
so gratified to prolong my stay within the advantages of the metropolis, 
that I have not yet begun to inquire after a regular station for preaching. 
Every consideration, however, and particularly the duty of making a 
renewed zealous effort for public good, calls me now to make the intjuiry. 
I have as yet thought but of one or two individuals to whom I can write. 
I have a transient engagement or two that will take up part of the 
spring. I thank you for the pleasure with which I read your book. It 
appears to me a just, elegant, and forcible exhibition of the grand prin¬ 
ciples of vital Christianity. 

My eyes are still not sound. Some of the symptoms, both from their 
nature and continuance, give me considerable apprehension. Mr. 
Greaves has given me ample details respecting the combined fiimilies, in 
which I am glad to find there is so much health and happiness. 

Will you present my best respects to my old friend Mrs. Fawcett, 
who surrenders to advancing age, it seems, none of her energies, and to 
voung Mr. and Mrs. F. ? In writing once to Mr. Greaves, and repeat- 
ecfly to Lanes, I felt it would be a capital indecorum to mention in the 


66 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


slight way of making compliments, persons to whom I had promised, and 
still owe, I don’t know how many sheets. If ever your time should 
allow, as your thoughts suggest, another friendly notice, I shall be so 
much the more gratified to receive, as I have not the remotest claim to 
expect, such a communication. 

I am, dear sir. Yours, with great respect, 

J. Foster. 


XXXIV. TO MRS. R. MANT. 

JVear Bristol, Feb. 17 , 1801 . 

My DEAR Friend, —When I left you about Christmas, it would have 
appeared, in looking forward, a long time to have delayed writing to you 
till past the middle of February; but in looking back the time seems 
wonderfully short. This difference between the appearance of the past 
and of the future seems unfavorable to happiness, which I think would 
be more befriended by prospect appearing short, and retrospect appear¬ 
ing long. It looks but a short period since I quitted Chichester as a 
residence; but to look forward over the dim and shadowy field of so 
much time to come, seems a very long anticipation. However, my dear 
friend, though the train of future days seems in the prospect-vision to 
stretch out to a strangely protracted length, they will soon be gone. I 
congratulate you and myself that life is passing fast away. What a 
superlatively grand and consoling idea is that of Death ! Without this 
radiant idea, this delightful morning-star, indicating that the luminary 
of Eternity is going to rise, life would, to my view, darken into midnight 
melancholy. Oh! the expectation of living here, and living thus, al¬ 
ways, would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming despair ! But thanks 
to that fatal decree that dooms us to die—thanks to that gospel which 
opens the vision of an endless life, and thanks, above all, to that Saviour- 
friend who has promised to conduct all the faithful through the sacred 
trance of death into scenes of paradise and everlasting delight! I have 
the most assured persuasion that you, my dear friend, are destined, at no 
very remote period, to make this sublime transition ; and shall not this 
divine prospect console you for all you have lost and suffered, and 
animate you to triumph over every desolate feeling by which you are 
environed ? If you are fatigued in life’s journey—if the scene and the 
persons through which you pass are inhospitable—see yonder, the palace 
divine, the angel-friends, and the region of ever-blooming flowers are 
nigh ! It is not far to go; be patient, go on, and live for ever. 

With musings like these my mind is familiar. Everything that in¬ 
terests my heart leads me into this mingled emotion of melancholy and 
sublime. I have lost all taste for the light and the gay; rather, I never 
had any such taste. I turn disgusted and contemptuous from insipid 
and shallow folly, to lave in the stream, the tide of deeper sentiments. 
There I swim, and dive, and rise, and gambol, with all that wild delight 



LETTERS. 


87 


which would be felt by a fish, after panting out of its element awhile, 

when flung into its own world of waters by some friendly hand.I 

have criminally neglected regular, studious thinking for many years: I 
must try whether it is now too late to resume a habit so essential to 
solid wisdom and real strength of mind. I have certainly learnt much 
from various society, and have in some degree improved my powers of 
social communication; but I feel in a most mortifying degree some men¬ 
tal and moral deficiencies, which I know that nothing can correct but a 
rigid discipline, which will absolutely require the seriousness of solitude. 
My greatest defects are in regard to religion, on which subject, as it re¬ 
spects myself, I want to have a profound and solemn investigation, which 
I foresee must be mingled with a great deal of painful and repentant 
feeling. What a serious task it is to confront one’s self with faithful 
truth ! and see one’s self by a light that will not flatter ! But it must 
be done, and the earliest season is therefore the best. At the last tri¬ 
bunal no one will regret having been a habitual and rigorous judge of 
self. It is an unhappy and enormous fault to live on amid uncertainties 
respecting the state of one’s mind, and with occasional eclipses of those 
delightful hopes which shine from the other world. I must therefore 
assemble all my convictions around me, and finally settle the great ac¬ 
count I have with God. 


XXXV. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Doicnend, March IS, 1801. 

My dear Friend,— You gained nothing by your affected formality 
of address. What was the use of substituting Sir for Friend, when 
amid the plaudits of the circle to wliich I repeatedly read your letter, I 
could so easily explode its commencement by the proud feeling with 
which I said, “ The writer of this is my friend ?” Your first sentence 
was meant as a vulture’s beak; I thus brake it in an instant. 

I should have been still more proud of this luminous friend, if he had 
been ho luminous as to leave me no refuge in the consciousness of his 
mistaking my character; if his faculties had been so powerful as to be 
just, though that justice had been in a language ten times more severe. 
While I acknowledge his strong sight, I feel that he chases me by moon¬ 
light, which allows me to squat in a shade where he cannot find me. If 
he were not my friend, how I should laugh to see him pass by in pursuit 
of his own shadow; but as he is my friend, I had rather suffer by his 
possessing an unerring sense. I have had several occasions of knowing 
that you do not understand me entirely; there is both good and evil in my 
heart, which you have not seen. There is yet an apartment or two in 
the interior of my mind, into which you have not quite sagacity enough 
to penetrate, nor quite candor enough for me to admit you. 

This deduction from your intellectual force still leaves me to admire 





88 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


it. And here again, what a miserable philosophy of the human mind 
you must have adopted, not to be certain that, unless interest or malig¬ 
nity intervene, superior mind is necessarily attached to superior mind all 
over the world. Genius hails its few brothers with a most fraternal 
warmth. I have too much talent not to be attracted by yours, and to 
attract it; you could not shake me off, if you would. We are both ele¬ 
vated so much as to confront each other conspicuously through the clear 
space above the heads of the crowd, and cannot help a pointed recogni¬ 
tion of each other’s mental visage. Thus I often converse with you in 
imagination, and revolt at paper and pens, which tell sentiments so 
faintly, so formally, so slowly, and so few. Our minds are two rival 
streams, and whatever invidious tracts dissociate their courses, they 
must approximate ; they are destined to meet again; and to swell and 
exult in their confluence. Or, do you dissent from this estimate of your¬ 
self and of me. Do you assign yourself to a humbler rank ? Be con¬ 
tent, then; it were ridiculous for a gudgeon to affect the company of a 
whale. Or do you degrade me from the equality ? Abandon, then, 
such an unfortunate production ; it were still more ridiculous for a whale 
to pursue a gudgeon. It was not any feeling of hurt vanity, was it, that 
dictated your vindictive sentences ? the vanity of a mind which, regard¬ 
ing me as a thermometer, was vexed to perceive its own impotence of 
heat ? It would be enough, you know, in that case, just to say, the in¬ 
strument is a had one; thus you have very properly ascribed my silence 
to “ apatby.” If I am the victim of apathy, it must be by that fascina¬ 
tion which betrays into the very thing most anxiously avoided ; for, next 
to remorse, there is no state of the mind I dread and detest so much. 
Perhaps you think there can be in the world no stronger test of feeling, 
or the want of it, than the bundle of snakes you sent me last,—in sooth, 
a lock of Medusa’s hair. It is a very humorous thing, though, to see a 
philosopher attempting to torment a stone. 

But you allow me a few “ sensibilities,” which you say faithfully at¬ 
tend my dear self. Indeed, you treat them very rudely ; you are like 
boys attempting to catch birds; however soft and gentle the approach, 
if the coy things fly away to the next bush, the wicked brats then throw 
stones after them. You frighten my poor sensibilities, you do ; and you 
must forgive them, if, like timid little chickens, they run under my own 
wing at sight of the great dun-colored hawk, with fierce black eyes, and 
a shrill note ; you must not tempt them to fly along in friendly company 
with the malicious fowl, as I have seen foolish little birds sometimes do, 
to be devoured. 

You say “ many have received the same impression.” While at Bat¬ 
tersea I knew perfectly that all the world was thinking of me ; but since 
I left, I had in my humility supposed it probable that mighty multitude 
might have forgotten me, as I knew that absent trifles could not occupy 
its majestic thoughts. Or, if I thought it all the world’s duty to be 
thinking of me, it was of course for me to attribute to it somewhat of 
my own sad vice of forgetting the absent. 


LETTERS. 


89 


I have been too much flattered, you say. In truth, it is currently 
said, we are both spoiled by our friends; but, I having heard it said in 
addition, that your spoiling makes you very ostentatious, you will forgive 
me, if in my solicitude to avoid this consequence of my spoiling, I have 
fallen into the opposite fault of reserve. But I am not irrecoverable; a 
little more of this soft incense might tempt me forth again. Instead of 
this, you salute me in your Philippics with the smoke of brimstone. 
You wish the criminal’s “ heart broken.” I should be sorry this opera¬ 
tion were performed by your surgical hand, as the ingredients of your 
letter seem to indicate there are no cordials remaining in your shop. 

You must have been taking a month’s instructions from the “ Xantippe” 
you have so kindly destined me to “ love and cherishbut as I am to 
have her in order to learn to write friendly letters, how much better a 
man I must be than you, who have only learnt to write virulent ones. 
If you have not been congenial, you could not have profited so fast. 
Let me know, however, who she is; for I cannot help suspecting your 
language is not hers; I do think any woman of so much sense would 
have expressed it in more gracious terms. 

I cannot join in your reverence for that amazing, busy activity of the 
world on which you turn so poetical, to mortify me with the contrast. 
Is it cynical to ask, “ What is effected by it all ?” Much of this huge 
bustle seems to me as important, if it were as innocent, as the rippling 
course of a rill, or the frisks of a company of summer flies. If I had 
the power of touching a large part of mankind with a spell, amid all 
this inane activity, it should be this short sentence, “Be quiet, he quiet.’’’’ 
Particularly, I have often thought that the moral and literary world suf¬ 
fers the greatest mischief from the crowd of authors. Seriously, it 
appears to me an enormous impediment to popular improvement; so 
much that is indifferent, or worse, occupies the time and the paper that 
else might and would be appropriated to the noblest productions of mind. 
. . . . Fortunately, however, the world has not beheld all that genius 

can do. There remain two mighty spirits who have not yet disclosed 
all their terrible potencies on the “ foughten field.” When the cause of 
virtue and truth is just sinking in destruction, we two shall rush forth 
amain like Mounier and Dessaix at Marengo, and change the aspect of 
the world in a moment! 

You suggest the idea fame. Cold as you pronounce me, I should 
prefer the deep animated affection of one person whom I could entirely 
love, to all the tribute fame could levy within the amplest circuit of her 
flight; which would be of the same value to me, alive or dead, as the 
cries of penguins about Cape Horn at this Hour. A Christian surely 
should despise this object; and I can suppose a being too elevated and 
too happy to think of it. Imagine a seraph, laving in the boundless 
ocean of mind, or flying through the hemisphere with a comet in his 
hand,—he cares nothing about fame. 

I wished to have got together a row of nettle sentences like yours; but 


90 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


vcrliy, I am either too dull or too kind. I have been walking in the 
fields, inhaling the mild breath of nature, and meeting her sweetest 
smile. I felt the charm through all my alfections, and I'orcibly felt, spite 
of all your accusations, and the appearances that seem to warrant them, 
that you have a large and unalterable interest there. I have returned 
quite in the disposition to acknowledge my neglect and my indolence, 
and to deplore that I have indeed proceeded but a little way on the “ path 
of celestialsbut take me along with you; I am ready to advance as 
your associate and rival onward to the Irontier of the world ;—nor stop 
there ! 

My mind needs amelioration ; it is a strange one. I am obtaining the 
analysis of it, piece by piece, at the cost of a great and sometimes pain¬ 
ful attention. 

I congratulate you on whatever possibilities of happiness you have 
gained in the addition to your family. Has no one suggested it may be 
time for you to study the subject of education ? Have you really begun 
your plan of Adeersaria ? The series of mine has reached some num¬ 
ber between five and six hundred. Let me urge you not to neglect this. 
You luxuriate among happy sentences and images, which ought not to 
be let vanish, like fairy bowers, to be seen no more. Take one book for 
pointed, philosophic, or fanciful articles; another exclusively for the 
striking passages in your unwritten sermons. I would eagerly begin 
such a plan as this last but for the ominous slate of my eyes, which very 
often concurs with other anticipations, and with the native tone of my 
heart, to wrap me in the saddest melancholy. I have a thousand times 
recollected a thought uttered by you in one of our rambles in a gloomy 
mood; “ Say I shall be damned—how foolish, then, to think of these 
trihing introductory ills; but say, I shall be saved, obtain boundless feli¬ 
city, in a shorty time—how w’eak then, to complain of these momentary 
pains!” 

You do no more than justice to the “ circle ” where I have spent some 
of the most delicious months of my life. Y^ou know wdio is the centre 
of that circle ; near enough to her 1 have constantly felt as if I could 
pass an age away without ever being tired.* .... The ladies to whom 

“ The course of my life since I left Battersea has included a good deal 
of the agreeable. The greater part has still been spent among ladies; 
and I enjoy the society of amiable women beyond any other. 1 am al¬ 
ways ha()py when the sentimentalism of my character, which otherwise 
evaporates in vague wishes, and the visions of fancy, finds real objects to 
interest it up to the tone of complacency ,—how much further this depo¬ 
nent saith i\ot. When thus interested, I become animated, profuse of 
sentiment, passionately fond of conversation, and time files away with 
a strange rapidity. A great part of my time I have passed with the younger 
Mrs. C. and Miss S., luxuriating over a wdde diffusion of sentiment and 
fancy. Sometimes we read ; but this .seldom succeeds much, for we gene¬ 
rally digress to an endless series of remarks and opinions of our own. We 
have agitated a great number of interesting questions ; and have sometimes 
found and sometimes scattered fiowers, over the region of thought. These 
two ladies are greatly beyond the common order of intellect and taste 



LETTERS. 


91 


I have read this response are astonished at such effronteiy in a criminal, 
as they say I really am, almost to the extent of your charge, before his 
judge. I assured them that a gallant defence was one of the best me¬ 
thods to propitiate him; he would be most dogged to a coward. 


XXXVI. TO THE REV. DR. RYLAND. 


April, 1801. 

Dear Sir, —I am ashamed to have detained the sermon so long as 
I read it immediately after receiving it from you, and with still more at¬ 
tention since. I have not been in Bristol since I saw you, except one 
wet night to inquire after a parcel, when I was unfit to call or stop any¬ 
where. 

I am not certain to what extent you would wish me to express an 
opinion, though very certain that to any extent your candor would for¬ 
give the freedom. If it were a question as to publishing the sermon or 
not, I would venture, after acknowledging in very strong terms the 
ingenuity, the variety, and the forcible description with which it abounds, 
to suggest a very few general considerations. 

AsJI?\sl, placing myself in the situation, I should be very reluctant to 
appear conspicuously in the class of what have been denominated “ dam- 

While they are employed in working I sit down, sometimes a number of 
hours together, and pour forth all my imagination or knowledge can supply ; 
and they call me enthusiastic, cynical, proud, or singular, by turns. I take 
a peculiar pleasure in dissecting the system of fashion, parade, ceremony, 
and trifles. I have examined, ridiculed, and execrated it in a hundred 
forms, and with every variety of language and illustration. They substan¬ 
tially agree with me, but accuse me of darting for ever toward the extreme. 
.... I preach here with considerable pleasure; and the family have ex¬ 
pressed their v.dsh that I may in some manner settle here. I often see 
various company here, and in Bristol, sometimes with pleasure; but often, 
every man who has tried the world knows, company is assembled for the 
assassination of time;—time destined, alas, to perish by a mightier hand, 
but men are willing to assist in its destruction. My mind is still familiar 
with melancholy musings; no place can banish them, and no society. 
There is ‘ that something still which prompts the eternal sigh’ Yet I 
would not be insensible to the pleasures that life does yield; I would not 
be insensible to the value of those that are past.”— Mr. Foster to Mrs. Ben- 
wetl, June 11, 1800. 

* A discourse on Isa, xiv, 10, “ Art thou become like unto us com¬ 
posed and delivered at Northampton when the author was in his twenty- 
third year (Nov. 26, 1775), and preached again at Bristol in 1776; “it 
seemed each time of its delivery to be heard with unusual seriousness, and 
in one instance, at least, had a very deep and salutary effect. (See the 
biographical account of the Rev. William Kilpin in Dr. Rippon’s Baptist 
Register, vol. i., p. 257). A copy having been shown in a distant part of 
the kingdom to some very respectable friends who urged its publication,” 
Pr. R. “ felt inclined to follow their advice,” and prepared it for the press; 
but relinquished the intention in consequence, most probably, of the sug¬ 
gestions contained in Mr. Foster’s letter. 




92 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


nation writers.” With the exception of Baxter and a few more, I am 
afraid that those who have expatiated most on infernal subjects, have felt 
them the least. A predilection for such subjects, and a calm, deliberate, 
minute, exhibition of them, always strikes me as a kind of Christian 
cruelty, the spirit of an auto da fe. I sincerely doubt the utility of a la¬ 
borious, expanded display of the horrors of hell: as far as I have had the 
means of observing the actual effect, I have found it far the greatest 
where one would anxiously wish it might not exist at all—in the minds 
of the timid, scrupulous, and melancholic. The utmost space I would 
allot in my writings to this part of the revelations of our religion should 
not at any rate exceed the proportion which, in the New Testament, this 
part of truth bears to the whole of the sacred book, the grand predomi¬ 
nant spirit of which is love and mercy. 

2. Though for a passing illustration it would be striking, I greatly 
doubt if such an application of the text, so formally and definitively made, 
be warrantable. Is the passage anything more than a finely poetic ac¬ 
count of the simple fact, the death of the tyrant? No part of this sub¬ 
lime ode appears to me to look beyond the grave, the state of being dead, 
or to bear any reference to the feelings or accostings of departed spirits, 

3. Does not extreme particularity on such a subject lose the effect, 
either by harassing the feelings into a revolting aversion to think of the 
subject at all, or sometimes by supplying a half-amusing detail to curi¬ 
osity, like Virgil’s Tartarus, rather than making a concentrated mighty 
impression on the heart. 

4. I doubt if revelation has anywhere given ground to suppose, or if 
reason, without revelation, can be cruel enough to s'uppose, such a super¬ 
lative malicious and horrid style of greetings, even in the infernal world. 
Something very different from this would be indicated in our Lord’s de¬ 
scription of the solicitude of the rich man, that his wicked connexions 
might not come into the same place of torment—a feeling surely which 
would not, if they did come, hail them with such an execrable malignity 
of pleasure. 

5. I feel, in the strain of some parts of the salutations of the wretched 
spirits, something too familiar, and even approaching too much to the air 
of spiteful fun, for the dreadful solemnity of the scene, and the supposed 
profound and infinite intensity of their feelings, 

6. In the instantaneous transition, towards the latter end, from hell to 
heaven, with the use of the same language in heaven as so lately with 
so much adaptedness in hell, I felt some degree of violence. It looks 
like an expedient to escape from the persecution of the former society 
and salutations. It has the appearance of needing to perform a kind of 
quarantine after coming from the great kingdom of plagues. 

Other remarks on particular passages may have occurred, but are 
scarcely of importance enough to be mentioned. 

The few observations I have expressed are entirely submitted, as being 
the dictates of a taste which may be wrong; and the unceremonious 


LETTERS. 


93 


manner in which they are communicated, is owing to that freedom which 
I always feel tlie most completely with those for whose judgment and 
candor I have the most entire respect; of you, therefore, I shall not need 
to entreat forgiveness. 

I am, dear sir, your sincere friend and servant, 

> J. Foster. 


XXXVII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Downend, Dec., ISOl. 

Mt dear Friend, —A small number of intervals so long as that 
since I wrote to you before, will conclude the short day of life,—a life 
not very auspicious to the best order of mental intercourse ; for letters 
do not deserve any such name—and this is one of the principal causes 
of my dilatoriness in writing them; a letter (though I am very glad to 
receive one) is so poor a substitute for the expansive discussion and 
romance of four or six hours. I was more gratified with the intercourse 
of your last visit than in any former season of my communications with 
you ; and felt after you went away, great regret that our situations are 
so distant from each other. I always feel that your society has the effect 
of a powerful mental discipline; and I could not help sketching in fancy 
the large augmentation of knowledge and power I should derive from 
the earnest, habitual co-operation of two minds, certainly well adapted to 
exercise each other. I should be happy to flatter myself that future 
time may have some chances of bringing us into more frequent or long- 
continued contact. 

.... Here one recollects that prince of magicians, Coleridge ; whose 
mind, too, is clearly more original and illimitable than Hall’s. Coleridge 
is indeed sometimes less perspicuous and impressive by the distance at 
which his mental operations are carried on. Hall works his enginery 
close by you, so as to endanger your being caught and torn by some of 
the wheels ; just as one has felt sometimes when environed by the noise 
and gigantic movements of a great mill. I am very sorry that by means 
of a short-hand writer, or by any other means, some of Hall’s sermons 
cannot be secured and printed. It is probable they would on the whole 
be equal to Saurin’s; as to manly simplicity, much preferable; for I now 
dislike Saurin’s ingenious arrangements. I read yesterday his sermon 

on the Passions; the greatest I think that I ever read or heard. 

Hall spoke of you, and attributed “ a great deal” (I believe was the ex¬ 
pression) of genius,” but reprobated your written style, on the same 
account that I always do; its want of simplicity. I have heard in Bristol 
that Coleridge means to go and take his family to France. 

At the invitation of Mrs. Snooke’s family, I went to Bourton, to Coles’s 
ordination; not at all caring, as you may suppose, about the ordination ; 
but pleased with an occasion of visiting the family, though sorry that om 




94 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of them was absent in London, and sorry not to meet you there, as I 
half expected. Hinton was there with a very superior sermon. I like 
Coles very much for his equal mixture of sense, piety, simplicity (as ap¬ 
pears), and kindness. 


XXXVIII. TO MRS. R. MANT. 

Downend, Dec. 14, 1801. 

The sight of frost and snow occasions me a mortifying recollection, 
that so the earth was clad when I last wrote to you, and that therefore 
almost a whole year has intervened. I feel it very shameful, and am 
utterly at a loss for apology; indeed apology, v/hen the most plausible, 
is a very shabby substitute for propriety of action. If, however, you 
could see into my soul, you would perceive the regard I have always 

felt to remain undiminished.My father and mother, and each 

of my very few other friends, have the same accusation to make, and to 
them I am reduced to the same style of penitential confession. I say 
“ very few friends,” correctly, for I have not added one to the list since 
1 saw you. I have but little ambition this way, for there is a kind of 
convergency in my feelings, which makes it quite impossible for me to 
be much attached to many. With wonder I hear some people talk of 
one dear friend, and another most intimate friend, and a third very par¬ 
ticular friend, and twenty, or twenty hundred charming friends, all of 
whom they are equally attached to, and every one of whom they are so 
infinitely glad to see ; you would suppose their hearts were large enough 
to fill the globe. At the same time, I by no means vote for the total 
dedication of affections to OTie object; this always appears to me misan¬ 
thropic, and therefore immoral. It is absurd too to imagine, that any 
one person can possess such a supreme monopoly of excellence, that the 
claims of all other beings are annihilated. I am pleased to find or be¬ 
lieve that there is some good in every one, and sorry to find that no one 
is without some fault; and when I consider how many faults I have my¬ 
self, I scarcely venture to flatter myself that any one can ever be very 
deeply or very long attached to me. I have the sincerest value for affec¬ 
tion, but am unwilling to take the pains to deserve it; and it were ridicu¬ 
lous to expect it to come gratuitously. 

I have been, since I wrote to you last, just the same kind of being I 
was before, and just similarly employed. I have been wishing for in¬ 
numerable things I have made no effort to obtain; as, for instance, to be 
very learned, to be very wise, to be very eloquent, to be very pleasing, 
to improve very fast, to do some little good, to gain a decisive self- 
government, to get rid of a number of infamous bad habits, which have 
long been and still remain desperately attached to me, &c.; but all this 
will not come down, like gentle April showers, from the sky; all these 

things require that a man set about conjuring might and main, and_ 1 

am no conjurer. 




LETTERS. 


95 


.... Imagination has often placed before me, since I saw it, your 
corner of Chichester; but chiefly that little quiet house in which I have 
passed so many interesting hours. I am willing to believe your health 
is at least as tolerable as when 1 saw you. It was then winter. You 
were to walk out a great deal when the spring and summer came ; did you 
do your duty ? Sweet verdure, meads, trees, flowers, birds, and the 
spirit of health did not fail to invite you; did you ? is it possible, thus 
courted, that you could refuse ? Yes, my friend, I know you so well 
as to be afraid, even though I know that no one has a more animated 
taste for these pleasures, that you did refuse. I shall never forget the 
rural beauty that so often regaled my solitary musings in your neighbor¬ 
hood. I shall never forget that Watery Lane, and the adjacent delicious 
meadows. My present locality is, in this respect, by no means so 

charming.If your county partook of the same bounty of nature 

as other parts, it must have been a delicious year. I am persuaded you 
find in religious felicities the best compensation for defects of satisfac¬ 
tion from the world, and even from friends. The supreme Friend is 
always accessible, and always infinitely kind. Let us endeavor, my 
dear friend, to embrace this truth, as if it were a benignant angel, to 
our hearts, and it will pour the energy of a divine consolation into the 
soul. The habitual melancholy of my spirits increases each year. I 
am not fit for life. My eyes are not much worse, but no better than 
when I saw you. . . . 


XXXIX. TO MRS. R. MANT. 

Downend, March 9, 1802. 

.... I was so much ashamed of my negligence when I wrote before, 
and am so very much delighted to hear from you again, that I feel my¬ 
self quite compelled to sit down and write to you immediately. You 
may, my friend, be assured that, writing or silent, I retain the same 
sincere and friendly regard which I have ever felt, and I think it cannot 
die away till memory fail. Your virtues and your kindness often return 
on my remembrance with a very grateful influence, something like 
what I have felt this morning in observing the first symptoms of ap¬ 
proaching spring. I always deem you one of the persons most eminently 
deserving to be happy that I have known; and I am persuaded, I am 
certain, you will be happy, and sublimely so. I cannot be sanguine in 
painting for you scenes of pleasure in this world,—alas, hope as long 
ceased to be sanguine for myself; —but, what will soon signify this 
world to us ? we are passing away with all the speed of time; let us 
look forward to the grand vision beyond the shades of Death ! There is 
our country; there is the sweet paradise of peace and ever-blooming 
delights; there is our Father’s house. I have been thinking for some 
time past, with more than usual clearness and seriousness of thought, 
of the vanity of all things in this life. It has not been a vain specula- 



96 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


tion, just adapted to be uttered in so many sentences, to be soon for¬ 
gotten both by the speaker and those that hear, but a cogent, convincing, 
and, in some degree, influential train of thought. The effect of it has 
been, in a measure, to make me more fervent in supplicating the final 
felicity of the soul, be the present life what it may ; to make me more 
resigned to the determinations of Providence, and more concerned to 
fulfil the duties of this transient period, whatever become of its pleasures. 
We have passed a large, a very large part of our life—soon the end 
will come ; and when we look back from the region of immortality, 
how trivial will appear all the present sorrows and cares—trivial, except 
in point of utility, in which point they may have been most important 
and advantageous. “ These light afflictions, which are but for a mo¬ 
ment, shall work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory.” 

I often sympathize with the desolate feelings which you suffer while 

surrounded by-, of whom, on this very account, it is impossible 

for me not to entertain a very mean opinion. But be comforted; you 
have had very sufficient evidence that their habits, feelings, thoughts', 
and tastes, are by no means adapted to mingle with yours, and there- 
foi'e you are left solitary. Shall you be sorry that your mind is too 
serious, too thoughtful, and too religious, to suit their society ? Could 
you be willing, in these important points, to humble yourself down to 
a complacent agreement with their levity or their oddity? You ought 
to feel your superiority, and dismiss the anxious wish for a companion¬ 
ship which you have amply found you cannot purchase but by descend¬ 
ing to their level; a level where you would never feel happy, if you did 
descend to it. Is not this fair consolation ? . . . . And oh ! above all, 
think of your great Father in heaven, whose friendship can be gained, 
and daily enjoyed, and kept for ever! This grand idea often flashes on 
my mind like lightning from the sky, while I am musing over my deso¬ 
late feelings, something like yourself, and regretting the want of those 
tender connexions which sometimes seem as if they would give life so 
much more interest and value. The more totally we are devoted to 
God, my friend, the more independent we shall be for pleasure on all 
other beings. What a sublime consolation ! if we can not have the 
creatures, we can have the Creator. And then, ere long, we shall 
see and love, and be loved by the noblest of his creatures, the great in¬ 
habitants of that superior world, where none of the imperfections of vain 
and fickle mortals can intrude. . . . 


XL. TO MRS. R. MANT. 

Bownend, Feb. 1, 1803 

My memory is, in general, sufficiently defective to fulfil all its duties 
of forgetting—with the most laudable punctuality ; but on this occasion 




LETTERS. 


97 


I have charging and enjoining it to be peculiarly faithful in its task of 
oblivion ; I mean in respect of the time when I wrote last, and when 
you replied, I well remember the contents of your letter, but I do not 
remember the dale, and I dare not open it just now for fear of seeing 
that date. 

My remembrance of you does not depend on particular dates of months 
and days, nor on any other thing foreign to that internal mind in which 
it faithfully and permanently resides. There it would always exist with¬ 
out any external object to awaken it or keep it alive, and always con¬ 
nected with a very cordial friendly feeling. Yet sometimes this remem¬ 
brance is forcibly recalled by anything that resembles any part of 
your house, your furniture, your vine, or any of the scenes in the vicinity 
of Chichester. This association of ideas is a very curious thing; here 
is an instance of it—the elegant little drawing which you gave me has 
been out of sight a considerable time, in one of my boxes, whence I just 
now took it out. No sooner did it appear than a swarm of recollections 
got about me, presenting, as with a hundred tiny fairy hands, a hundred 
other miniature pictures to my fancy; as, for instance, portraits of you, 

of Mr. De-, of Miss W-, and many other persons ; the pictures 

in the little room which I once occupied, and a sight of your vine; but 
here imagination was to produce a double effect at the same time ; for I 
would not see it fruitless and leafless, but made it appear in a green and 
tantalizing form, with several such good-natured clusters bending almost 
within the casement for me to take ’em, but in vain ! But how often 
this very object has been before me in reality, and not as a vision of ima¬ 
gination. Yes, I think of it, and ask myself with a kind of wonder, 
Have I really been very often in that very place, where these objects 
are real ?” I feel it difficult fully to grasp the idea, that this person—I 
—am the same that have been a long time in that place, and am now in 
this place, so far removed. Did I really once live at Chichester ? I 
really do believe I did, I certainly either did, or have dreamed that I 
did ; and I seem to have the images before me even now of many things 
and persons which I saw there, and something very like recollection of 
things that I did and said there. I seem to recollect a neat meeting¬ 
house in which methinks I used to walk till I wore one of the aisles so 
much as to alarm some of the good people for the safety of the place. 
There was a long, solitary, rural lane, called “ Watery Lane,” in which 
I verily think I used sometimes to muse; and I seem to recollect even 
now some of the sentiments that I felt there, and some of the objects 
which I saw. Would you believe that I recollect an incomparably beau¬ 
tiful reflection of the sky in a small piece of water there; a grasshopper 
of very great size ; an adventure with an ox ; a pair of magnifleent but¬ 
terflies ; and a most beautiful rainbow scene, which I at the time anx¬ 
iously charged my imagination to retain for ever : not to mention all the 
apparitions and horrid visions that I conversed with in that place ? It 
is very gratifying thus to be able to retain the images of some objects 


98 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


and scenes long after they have been removed far from sight. But what 
a number of ideas imparted by objects once present to these eyes are 
irrevocably gone ! Since I left you more than three years and a half 
have now elapsed, a considerable and serious space to have advanced 
toward the final, fatal hour. Many that both of us then knew alive, are 
now removed to the invisible region. To us, my friend, the time will 
come, and no point to which it is possible for our life to be protracted can 
justly be called remote, while we see time pass so fast away. Well, 
and let it come ! I am persuaded my excellent friend still regards the 
prospect of death as the prime of her pleasures. And with this sublime 
consciousness, how little you can envy the vain pleasures around you ! 
These pleasures will soon fade into a dreary autumn; yours are begin¬ 
ning to bud into the living green of an eternal spring. You would not 
exchange—no enlightened mind would exchange —one of the consolatory 
and radiant ideas that beam upon you sometimes from hereafter, for all 
the delights for which fools solicit and worship this world. Say to your¬ 
self, “ I have not parade and splendor, nor giddy juvenile gaiety, nor 
amusements, nor so much of the kind sympathies of friendship as I 
could wish ; but I have the promises and the fidelity of a God, the as¬ 
surance of a guardian Providence, the intercession of a Redeemer, the 
visions of Eternity, the prospects of Paradise.” My friend, I love to 
suggest such ideas to you, because they are appropriate to you. If I 
were to meet some of your gay neighbors in a pensive mood, I should 
not know how to console them, but with you I have no difficulty. 

Thoughts of this kind would not come with so good a grace from me, 
if I myself were, the while, enjoying all the pleasures of this life. But 
the case is not so. My lot has probably some advantages over yours, 
but it is not such as to prevent my needing the full force of the consola¬ 
tions which I wish to suggest to you. And, my friend, would it be a 
good thing for life to be so crowded with temporal felicities as to make 
us forget eternity ? Take for your motto the text, “ All things work 
together for good to them that love God.” .... 

I do not rate the social intercourse so low as that I could not wish you 
had some one or two pleasant friends to beguile and exhilarate your 
long evenings, this wintry season. But, my friend, we cannot transform 
our neighbors; .... we cannot create interesting human beings; nor 
can we bring them flying through the air from distant places, like the 
witches that used to ride on broomsticks, and make them, at will, alight 
by the fireside. Consider, too, that as we cannot make others such as 
we wish, so neither do we choose to make ourselves such as they wish. 
My friend might have more society, if she would only be vain and frivo¬ 
lous ; but will she, for the sake of the society, give up the dignity of 
character which is of more value to her than that which she might gain 
by sacrificing it ? . . . . 

.... My mind is perhaps gradually but very slowly improving in 
knowledge, and the power of displaying and using it. My habits are 


LETTERS. 


99 


more retired and solitary than in the former part of, the time of my resi¬ 
dence here, and more than half the visits that I make are rather from a 
kind of duty of office than from inclination. 

My long respected friend, Mr. Hughes, has spent a month in this 
neighborhood each autumn since I have been here. His company is 
always the highest excitement of my faculties. He is a very superior 
man. 

.... I find myself not completely formed for friendship, for I often 
seclude myself in gloomy abstraction, and say, “ All this availeth me 
nothing.” 


XLI. TO MRS. R. MANT. 

Downend, April or May, 1803. 

I DO not know what day of the month it is, nor whether it be April 
or May, but I believe it is some days past the time that I promised to 
write to you. The last week or two I have been very busy between so¬ 
ciety and some dry, laborious composition that I have been about. It 
always gives me the sincerest pleasure to hear from you, and I therefore 
thank you for your last letter, which, however, gave me less pleasure 
than some of your former ones, on account of its description of the state 
of your health. I can completely feel that such a headache, for a con¬ 
siderable portion of the fine part of the year, must be a most distressing 
companion, and am reduced again to the impotent wish that something 
could be recommended or done that should relieve you. One often feels 
it a melancholy thing to see or know that a friend suffers, and to be un¬ 
able to do more than repeat the lesson of patience. That lesson, how¬ 
ever, becomes forcible and important, when it is recollected that he who 
sends afflictions is the Infinitely Good and Wise,—who does all things 
well, and never gives his servants pain, even for a moment, but for 
their advantage. Remember, my friend, what a sublime compensation 
he is able to make you for all these troubles, and often read and muse 
on those promises in which he has engaged to make you eternally hap¬ 
pier for the present pains. Think how completely all the griefs of this 
mortal life will be compensated by one age, for instance, of the felicities 
beyond the grave, and then think that one age multiplied ten thousand 
times, is not so much to eternity as one grain of sand is to the whole 
material universe. Think what a state it will be to be growing happier 
and happier still as ages pass away, and yet leave something still hap¬ 
pier to come. Think whether the most adoring and emphatical grati¬ 
tude will not be often kindled amidst those never-ending ages, when it is 
felt that no small part of this felicity is the strict consequence of those 
pains and griefs which were so oppressive in the poor state of mortal 
life. It would seem a great thing if I were authorized to prophesy to 
you, that within a month you should obtain perfect vigorous health, be 
surrounded by the most interesting friends, and amidst unlimited afflu- 



100 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ence; all which you should retain to the last week of your life; with 
what elation of feeling I should at first be eager to write the prediction ; 
and what an object of envy you would soon become. But oh, what a 
despicable trifle would be all this compared with what is really before 
you, on the assurance of the word of Him that cannot lie ! And if the 
latter were, you were certain, within one month of your attainment, 
would not you feel the most animated emotion at the prospect ? Let 
not the difference between this supposed month, and the uncertain length 
of time before you, which may extend through a number of years, op¬ 
pressed by languor and affliction, extinguish all the pleasure of such a 
hope. Let us devote our most serious industry to the great concern of 
bbing habitually prepared for the coming of the Son of Man. 

There are many affecting admonitions. 1 have been acquainted ever 
since I came into this neighborhood, with the widow of a man whom I 
knew and highly respected, and who died two or three years since, 
leaving this widow and two daughters (young women of very great ex¬ 
cellence) in Bristol, where I have generally called on them when I have 
spent a few hours in the town. Yesterday (not having called on them 
for several weeks) 1 entered with a lively, unthinking air, the parlor 
where the elder lady and one of the daughters were sitting at work, and 
said in a gay voluble manner, “ How does the world go ? how have you 
all been since I saw you ? where’s Sarah ?” I had slightly, at my 
entrance, perceived a certain gravity somewhat more than usual, but did 
not particularly mind it, as they were a habitually grave family, being 
Quakers. After some hesitation, the daughter replied, “You have not 
heard then of our loss; Sarah is dead.” 

I suppose your town has scarcely escaped the influenza, which has 
been so extensive and fatal. Most people in this neighborhood have had 
it, and some have been carried off*. I have been entirely exempt. The 
complaint in my eyes is more troublesome during all the warmer part of 
the year than in the winter; of course I begin to feel it now in'the 
spring. It is often such as to require some exercise of patience, besides 
being a gloomy omen, as I still consider it, of the final loss of sight. You 
cannot wonder that this is a melancholy anticipation, sufficient to damp 
all the gaiety of life, if I had any inclination of that kind. The double 
complaint in my throat is not quite gone, but materially better. I am 
sorry to think it probable that you are debarred from the luxuries of this 
delicious season. I can answer for the enchantment you feel, if you are 
able sometimes to take a walk up the lane and through the fields. The 
whole welcome visitation of blossoms, sweet verdure, cuckoos, and 
nightingales, is come down on the earth, and made it all a new world 
within the last month. All the beauties of the scene have been displayed 
to me this afternoon in an extended rural walk, in which I anxiously 
endeavored to seize all the magic images, and fix them in my mind, for 
a perpetual Paradise of Fancy to have recourse to, perhaps after I lose 
the power of receiving any more images by the eye. I could not help 


ESSAY. 


101 


being amazed at the power which could thus, by means that none can 
understand, and in the space of a few weeks, or even days, pour such a 
deluge of charms over the creation. We should cultivate as much as 
possible the habit of being led by everything we contemplate to the 
great First Cause. 


Here it becomes necessary to advert to Foster’s literary 
pursuits. It appears from the preceding correspondence, that 
even while at Brearley, Foster entertained some indeterminate 
projects of authorship. With this view, probably, he commenced, 
before the age of twenty, the practice of committing to paper 
observations on natural objects, illustrations of human character, 
and reflections on morals and religion. From these he selected 
such as appeared worthy of preservation, and formed them into a 
series, carefully written and numbered, under the quaint title of 
“A Chinese Garden of Flowers and Weeds.” In the present 
volume it has already been quoted as “the Journal.” It was 
continued through successive years, and the last portion appears 
to have been written during his residence at Downend. It 
contains in all eight hundred and ten articles. On his return 
from Ireland he informs Mr. Hughes that he was engaged on “ a 
kind of moral Essay;” the subject, however, is not mentioned. 
Of his early productions none have been preserved, excepting the 
following Essay, which will be read, not without interest, as a 
specimen of his juvenile style of thinking. 


ON THE GREATNESS OF MAN. 

Mankind viewed collectively, as an assemblage of beings, presents to 
contemplation an object of astonishing magnitude. It has spread over 
this wide world to essay its powers against every obstacle, and every 
element; and to plant in every region its virtues and its vices. As we 
pass along the plains, we perceive them marked by the labors, the 
paths, or the habitations of man. Proceeding forward across rivers, or 
through woods, or over mountains, we still find man in possession on the 
other side. Each valley that opens, and each hill that rises before us, 
presents a repetition of human abodes, contrivances, and appropriations; 
for each house, and garden, and field (in some places almost each tree), 
reminds us that there is a person somewhere who is proud to think and 
say, “ This is mine.” 

All the beautiful and rugged varieties of earth, from the regions of 
snow to those of burning sand, have been pervaded by man. If we sail 





102 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


to countries .beyond the seas, we find him still, though he may disclaim 
our language, our manners, and our color. And if we discover lands 
where he is not, we presently quit them, as if the Creator too w’ere a 
stranger there. Here and there indeed a desert retreat is inhabited by 
an ascetic, whom the solemnity of solitude has drawm thither; or by a 
felon, whom guilt has driven thither. 

While he extends himself thus over the world, behold his collective 
grandeur. It appears prominent in great cities built by his own hands;— 
it is seen in structures that look like temples erected to Time, which 
promise by their strength to await the latest years of his continuance 
with men; and seem to plead by their magnificence against the decree 
which dooms them to perish when he shall abandon them ;—it is seen in 
wide empires, and in armies, which may be called the talons of imperial 
power—to give security to happiness where that power is just, but for 
cruel ravage where it is tyrannical;—it is displayed in fleets ; in engines 
which operate as if informed w’ith a portion of the actuating power of his 
own mind; in the various productions of beauty; the discoveries of 
science; in subjected elements, and a cultivated globe. The sentiment 
with which we contemplate this scene is greatly augmented when 
imagination bears her flaming torch into the enormous shade w'hich over¬ 
spreads the past, and passes over the whole succession of human exist¬ 
ence, with all its attendant prodigies. When we have made the addition 
for futurity, of supposing the human race extensively enlightened, apprised 
of their dignity and power, and combined in a far stricter union, till 
the vast ocean of mind prevail over all its accustomed boundaries, and 
sweep away many of the evils which oppress the world,—we may pause 
awhile and indulge our amazement. Such an aggregate view of the 
multitude, achievements, and powers of Man, is grand. It has the air 
of a general and endless triumph. 

But we know that mere multitude is not greatness. An object that is 
great only by the assemblage of many separate objects which are not in¬ 
dividually great, is constantly in hazard of being resolved, while we view 
it, into the diminutiveness of which it is composed; and the character 
of greatness cannot survive a moment the charm which seemed to com¬ 
pact them into one. Great objects undoubtedly display an augmented 
grandeur in conjunction; but as everything which depends on combina¬ 
tion is subject to be annihilated by dissolution, that greatness alone is 
permanent, which resides in an object that is simple and indivisible. 
We can view without emotion a lofty and extensive building of stone ; 
but show us a single rock of the same dimensions, and we gaze with 
admiration. And if a being were created who should possess physical 
powers and mental powers equal to those of the entire human race, he 
would be a much sublimer object than collective Man. Sometimes, sus¬ 
pended high in contemplation, we look down on the human world as an 
immense mass of active intelligence and power; but lowering gradu¬ 
ally from our elevation, we find that our circle of view becomes less and 


ESSAY. 


103 


still less ample ; and we begin to perceive too the lines of division that 
traverse the scene in all directions, and dissect it into the perplexity and 
littleness of countries, states, and families. Descending still, we descry 
a separating space round each individual; and deserted now by all the 
buoyancy of fancy, the mind at last falls down into one of these inter¬ 
stices, to look round with disgust on the small separate parts of this 
great whole, and murmur, “ Where is the grandeur of Man ?” We 
observe one person has feeble intellects ; the next has mean dispositions; 
a third is a petty composition of whims and humors; another the slave 
of ignorance or prejudice ; the next a trifler ; and that other stained with 
the black of infamy ; and so onward to an indefinite number. Yet hap¬ 
pily, we are sometimes relieved from this dissatisfaction of. individual 
scrutiny, by the appearance of an object which powerfully arrests our 
attention, and quickly converts it into admiration: an object at once 
great and indivisible. A character stands before us of colossal stature, 
who presents the lineaments and the powers of man in magnitude,—a 
magnitude which conceals a numerous crowd of mankind undistinguished 
behind him. His aspect declares that he knows he belongs to himself, 
and that he possesses himself; while the rest seem only to belong as 
appendages to the situation. He brings from the Creator a commission 
far more ample than those of other men ; and instead of having to learn 
with tedious application, the nature and circumstances of the world to 
which he is sent, it appears as if he had been taught them all before he 
came. Guided by intuitive principles and rules, he enters on the stage 
of action with the intelligent confidence of one who has accomplished 
himself by frequenting it long. And whatever still undiscovered means 
and materials are requisite to his achievements, some kind of internal 
revelation informs him where they are, though latent in earth, water, 
air, or fire ; and empowers him quickly to detect them and draw them 
thence. We observe that for many things he has regards and names 
diflerent from the common; for some objects generally esteemed great, 
excite no emotion in him, or none but contempt. He calls suffering, 
discipline ; sacrifices, emolument; and what are usually deemed insu¬ 
perable obstacles, he names impediments, and casts them out of the way, 
or vaults over them. His mind seems a focus which concentrates into 
one ardent beam the languid lights and fires of ten thousand surround¬ 
ing minds. It might be expected that a few such extraordinary speci¬ 
mens of human nature, scattered here and there, would have a wonderful 
influence on the rest of men. One might expect to see a most fervid 
emulation kindled wide, indolence and folly discarded, and trifles falling 
to the ground from all hands. It should seem natural to make the re¬ 
flection, “ Either these are more than men, or we are less.” We are 
disappointed. Let spleen be repressed whenever we survey mankind; 
for it can represent everything flat and mean. But when benevolence 
itself makes the survey in the candid light of truth, it must either philo¬ 
sophize heroically, or pathetically lament; for, indeed, the intellectual 


104 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER- 


and moral system is deeply degraded. The imposing proof of it is in 
this fact, that the grandest human characters make but a very slight 
impression on many minds, and on very many others none at all. How 
large a number, for instance, have souls so dark, so hopelessly contracted 
and dull, so like the clay that encloses them, that they are unable to 
recognize greatness when displayed before them! Again, it is true that 
“ the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” 
Yes, it is a night of mind too thick for these luminaries to irradiate I 
Who shall assign the reason ? Is it true that the human nature was 
cast to carry forward the great series of existence, from the inferior to 
the higher ranks of being, by a gradation which such parts were neces¬ 
sary to complete ? or is it a solemn decree of fate that the aggregate 
amount of human dignity must not exceed a certain measure, and there¬ 
fore the splendid intellectual possessions of individuals are of the nature 
of conquests, made at the expense of part of their brethren, who must 
be degraded, to counterbalance these glories ? As to the very numerous 
class who hold the degree of mediocrity, tell them of a man who has 
performed a noble act of justice or benevolence in spite of the most 
j)Owerful temptations to the contrary; tell them of another who has suf¬ 
fered tortures and death for virtue’s sake—and suffered them w’ithout a 
groan; describe to them heroes who have possessed their souls unap- 
])alled when environed by dangers, and horrors, and death, and fire; or 
talk to them of a sublime genius, that transcending Milton’s powerful 
aofents, who constructed a road from the infernal kinodom to this unfor- 
tunate world, has carried a path from this world among the stars, and 
generally the emotion kindled would be so languid, that the smallest 
trifle will extinguish it, and turn attention another way. They are con¬ 
tent to acknowledge that such characters are much superior to them ; 
just as they would acknowledge that a tree is taller, and then think no 
more about them. They resemble some lazy and incurious peasants 
inhabiting the neighborhood of a high mountain, from the top of which 
tliey have heard that vast plains, and cities, and ocean, can be seen, but 
never thought it worth the labor to ascend for such a view. • 

How pleasing it is to turn from the side of despair to that of hope ! 
This indiflerence does not reign in every bosom. There are some per- 
' sons in whose souls the Divinity has mingled a portion of the celestial 
fire, which, partially oppressed by discordant materials and inauspicious 
influences, but ever-living, glows and starts and sparkles in restless in¬ 
cessant activity. It is interesting to observe the features of their charac¬ 
ters and the movements of their minds. The common stream of life’s 
pleasures tastes insipid, and its trifles cannot amuse them ; they sigh 
spontaneously for something nobler. How deep their astonishment, 
while they contemplate the spirit and state of society, viewed sometimes 
as one great concourse, tumultuously busy about vanity, and then re¬ 
solved, according to character, into the different classes of those who 
try to quench the ethereal spirit in degraded pleasure ; of those who 


ESSAY. 


105 


sacrifice everything that makes a man preferable to a brazen statue, at 
Mammon’s shrine, and would sell the sun and moon, if in their power, 
for money; and of those light beings that cluster into mirthful groups, 
where the entrance of wisdom would be regarded like the introduction 
of a coffin. The reflections that affect, and the ideas that inspire them 
most, they find they do not possess in common with the numbers that 
surround them, and the impossibility of reciprocation, therefore, often 
insulates them from society. An original fountain of an unknown ele¬ 
ment springing perpetually within, diffuses such a peculiar quality 
through the character, and causes such uncommon forms of mental vege¬ 
tation, that the men appear a kind of foreigners, and their sentiments, 
when disclosed, exotics. They are like trees torn from some remote 
continent, and drifted to a coast where the natives do not recognize the 
fruits they carry, and will not taste them. They exult in the conscious¬ 
ness of existence ; but this exultation is continually disturbed by secret 
intimations that existence has a scope and has treasures from the ful¬ 
ness of which they are precluded by imbecility. In simple phrase, they 
feel as if they possessed not enough of existence, and would occupy a 
wider space, and act in greater dimensions, among the ranks of intellec¬ 
tual being. 

The prime passion of their souls is for mental liberty. They find 
themselves restricted and confined within limits against which they most 
zealously rebel; and struggle eagerly to break forth on the infinite field 
of the universe, where they may expatiate without bound, and attain the 
amplitude and elevation of thought which they always desire. A sub¬ 
lime image of perfection is constantly before them at a distance, though 
a gloomy cloud may sometimes interpose, to obscure or for a moment 
hide it. They are like night adventurers, who, having caught a view of 
a noble mansion on a difficult eminence, resolve to reach it, while, to¬ 
gether with the path that conducts thither, it is alternately revealed by 
flashes of lightning, and shrouded by the returning darkness. They are 
grieved almost to madness when they feel their spirits failing in a trial, 
or find their powers retreating from some noble but arduous attempt. 
Grand objects in the natural world affect them powerfully, and their 
images are adopted as a kind of scenery for the interior apartment of 
the mind, to assist it to form great thoughts. But the interest they feel 
in greatness when it shines in their brother man, is of force to fire their 
utmost enthusiasm, at the view of exalted heroism, displayed in enter¬ 
prise, in suffering, or even in retirement, and to melt them into tears 
at the recital of an act of godlike generosity. For a while they almost 
lament that they could not be there, and themselves the actors, though 
ages have passed since. In the reveries into which they sometimes 
wander, they are apt to personate some exalted character in some inter¬ 
esting situation; or more frequently to fancy themselves such charac¬ 
ters, and create situations of their own; and when they return from 
visionary rovings, to the serious ground of reason, regretting the inertion 


106 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of the past, they solemnly resolve the most strenuous exertions to sur¬ 
pass, beyond measure, all around them, and their present selves. 

My friends ! this ardor must not be extinguished ; it expresses youl 
kindred with the objects at which it burns. But it cannot die. An at- 
tempt to soothe it into lasting quiescence, and to hide in oblivion the 
affecting views and images that have cherished it, would be vain. It is 
destined to accompany the man through life, at his choice to mortify or 
inspire him; for it is imparted by the Divinity as at once an incitement 
and a power of noble action, which it will invigorate with its mighty 
energy; but it will haunt and harass an unmanly repose with incurable 
restlessness. Restless, too, will be the career to which it prompts; but, 
like that of the sun, it will be the restlessness of continual progression, 
and inextinguishable fire. The passion you feel is the love of great¬ 
ness, and will aid your approximation to that which it loves. 

But what is the greatness of man ? The distinction of great was un¬ 
doubtedly first applied to things in the natural world, and afterward, 
through that pleasing and wonderful analogy between the various de¬ 
partments of existence which makes every object the mirror to a cor¬ 
responding one, it was applied to the remarkable individuals among men. 
The distinction naturally belonged to objects of uncommon size or force 
—to effects which prove themselves the result of mighty causes—and 
to powers which defy all human control; and it was easily extended to 
those men in whose predominant qualities a certain resemblance of these 
instances in nature was discovered. And we cannot long contemplate 
natural sublimity without a glancing of the mind toward human great¬ 
ness; nor the greatness of man without viewing in fancy-the grand 
visions of nature. The relation has even taken possession of our lan¬ 
guage ; for brilliant, strong, lofty, profound, firm, and twenty similar 
words, are the epithets which we use, and must use, in describing great 
characters. We may be permitted a slight deviation, within the scope 
of this analogy, to notice several of the grand objects in the natural 
world. For instance, we behold a lofty mountain, which has been seen 
by so many eyes of shepherds, laborers, and fancy’s musing children, 
that will see it no more. While we view the towering majesty and un¬ 
changeable sedateness of its cliffs and sides, and the venerable gloom of 
forty centuries impressed on its brow, imparting a deeper solemnity to 
the sky, which sometimes darkens the summit with its clouds and thun¬ 
ders, the expression of our feelings is—How sublime ! We have taken 
our stand near a great cataract; the thundering dash, the impetuous re¬ 
bound, the furious turbulence, and the murky vapor—oh, what a spec¬ 
tacle ! sometimes, while we have gazed, the noise and mass of waters 
seemed to increase every moment, threatening to involve and annihilate 
us. We could fancy we heard preternatural sounds—the voice of death 
—through the roar. It seemed as if some hideous breach had taken 
place of the regular order of the system, and the element were rushing 
from its natural state into strange combustion, as the commencement of 


ESSAY. 


107 


ruin. It gives a most striking representation of omnipotent vengeance 
pouring on enormous guilt. We wonder almost that the stream could 
change the calmness with which it flowed a little while before into such 
dreadful tumult, and that from such dreadful tumult it could subside into 
calmness again. 

Perhaps we have seen the sea reposing in calmness. Its ample ex¬ 
tent and glassy smoothness seeming almost to rival the sky expanded 
above it; its depth to us unknown; the thought that we stand near a 
gulf, capable in one hour of extinguishing all human life—and the 
thought that this vast body, now so peaceful, can move, can act with a 
force quite equal to its magnitude—inspire a sublime sentiment. Per¬ 
haps we have seen it in tempest, moving with a host of mountains to 
assault the eternal barrier which confines its power. If there were in 
reality spirits of the deep, it might suit them well to ride on these ridges, 
or howl in this raging foam. We have often seen the fury of little 
beings; but how insignificant in comparison of what we now behold, 
the world in a rage ! Indeed, we could almost imagine that the great 
world is informed with a soul, and that these commotions express the 
agitations of its passions. Undoubtedly to mariners, hazarded far off in 
the midst of such a scene, the sublimity is lost in the danger. Horror 
is the sentiment with which they survey the vast flood, rolling in hideous 
steeps, and gulfs, and surges; while at a distance, on the gloomy limit 
of the view. Despair is seen to stand, summoning forward still new bil¬ 
lows without end. But, to a spectator on the land, the influence which 
breathes powerfully from the scene, and which conscious danger would 
darken into horror, is illuminated into awful sublimity, by the perfect se¬ 
curity of his situation. ^ 

But the sun far transcends all these objects, and yet mingles no terror 
with the emotion of sublimity. His grandeur is expressed in that vivid 
fluctuation, and that profuse efliilgence, which, so superior to the faint¬ 
ness of a merely reflective luminary, are the signs of an original, in¬ 
exhaustible fire. He has the aspect of a potentate, ambitious in universal 
empire of nothing but the power of universal beneficence; and a stranger 
to the character of our part of the creation would think that must be a 
pure and happy world which is blest with so grand a radiance ! What 
a pleasure to see him rise—but partially at first, as with a modest delay, 
till the smile which his appearance kindles over the world invites him 
to come forward. A certain demure coldness which a little while be¬ 
fore gave every object a coy and solitary air, shutting up even the beau¬ 
ties of every flower from our sight, is changed by his full appearance 
into a kind of social gaiety, and all things, animate and inanimate, seem 
to rejoice with us and around us. We view him climbing the clouds 
Jiat sometimes appear on the horizon in the form of mountains, which 
he seems to set on fire as he climbs. In his course through the sky, 
he is sometimes seen shaded with clouds, as if passing under the um¬ 
brage of a great forest, and sometimes in the clear expanse, like a vast 


108 


LIFE OF JOHP4 FOSTER. 


fountain of the element of which minds are made. From morning till 
evening he has the dominion of all that is grand and beautiful over the 
face of nature, and seems at once to make it his own, and to make it 
ours. His glories are augmented in his decline, as he passes down the 
sky amid a wilderness of beautiful clouds, tlie incense of the world, 
collected to honor him as he retires; till at last he seems to descend 
into a calm sea with amber shores—leaving, however, above the horizon 
a mellow lustre, soft and sweet, as the memory of a departed friend. 
How important and dignified should that course of action be, which is 
lighted by such a lamp ! How magnificent that system which required 
so great a luminary—and to what a stupendous elevation will that 
thought rise, which must vault over such an orb of glory, in its way to 
contemplate a Being still infinitely greater ! 

When the night is come, we may look up to the sublime tranquillity 
of the heavens, where the stars are seen, like nightly fires of so many 
companies of spirits, pursuing their inquiries over the superior realms. 
We know not how far the reign of disorder extends, but the stars ap¬ 
pear to be beyond its limits ; and, shining from their remote stations, 
give us information that the universe is wide enough for us to prosecute 
the experiment of existence, through thousands of stages, perhaps in 
far happier climes than this. Science is the rival of imagination here, 
and by teaching that these stars are suns, has given a new interest to 
the anticipation of eternity, which can supply such inexhaustible mate¬ 
rials of intelligence and wonder. Yet these stars seem to confess that 
there must be still sublimer regions for the reception of spirits refined 
beyond the intercourse of all material lights; and even leave us to im¬ 
agine that the whole material universe itself is only a place where 
beings are appointed to originate, and to be educated through successive 
scenes, till passing over its utmost bounds into the immensity beyond, 
they there at length find themselves in the immediate presence of the 
Divinity. ^ 


EXTRACTS FROM MR. FOSTEr’s JOURNAL. 

Many of these passages will serve to illustrate the biography ; 
as they record expressions of personal feeling, incidents, and 
conversational remarks, relating to the period through which the 
narrative in this chapter extends. 

41. I aspire to be an intellectual painter, and I review nature’s scenery 
so often, to possess myself of colors. 

64. I wish a character as decisive as that of a lion or a tiger, and an 
impetus towards the important objects of my choice as forcible as tiieirs 
towards prey and hostility;—wish to have an extensive atmosphere of 
consciousness; a soul which can mingle with every element in every 



JOURNAL. 


109 


form; which, like an iEoliaii harp, arrests even the vagrant winds, and 
makes them music. 

120. The equanimity which a few persons preserve through the di¬ 
versities of prosperous and adverse life, reminds me of certain aquatic 
plants which spread their tops on the surface of the water, and with 
wonderful elasticity keep the surface still, if the water swells or if 
it falls, 

123. Adversity ! thou thistle of life, thou too art crowned ; first with 
a flower, then with down. 

205. A man of genius may sometimes suffer a miserable sterility ; 
but at other times he will feel himself the magician of thouglit. Lu¬ 
minous ideas will dart from the intellectual firmament, just as if the 
stars were falling around him ; sometimes he must think by mental 
moonlight, but sometimes his ideas reflect the solar splendors. 

207. Casual thoughts are sometimes of great value. One of these 
may prove the key to open for us a yet unknown apartment in the 
palace of truth, or a yet unexplored tract in the paradise of sentiment 
that environs it. 

209. When the majestic form of Truth approaches, it is easier for a 
disingenuous mind to start aside into a thicket till she is past, and then 
re-appearing say, “ It was not Truth,” than to meet her, and bow, and 
obey. 

210. When we withdraw from human intercourse into solitude, we 
are more peculiarly committed in the presence of the Divinity; yet 
some men retire into solitude to devise or perpetrate crimes. This is 
like a man going to meet and brave a lion in his own gloomy desert, in 
the very precincts of his dread abode. 

212. Time is the greatest of tyrants. As we go on towards age, he 
taxes our health, our limbs, our faculties, our strength, and our features. 

213. Youth is not like a new garment, which we can keep fresh and 
fair by wearing sparingly. Youth, while we have it, we must wear 
daily, and it will fast wear away. 

214. The retrospect on youth is too often like looking back on what 
was a fair and promising country; but is now desolated by an over¬ 
whelming torrent, from which we have just escaped. 

216. Or it is like visiting the grave of a friend whom we had injured, 
and are precluded by his death from the possibility of making him an 
atonement. 

218. I am not observing, I am only seeing: for the beam of my eye is 
not charged with thought. 

235. Characters formed in the routine of a court, like pebbles in a 
brook, are rounded into a smooth uniformity, in which the points and 
angles of virtuous singularity are lost. 

262. Sweet bird! it is a tender and entrancing note, as if breathed by 
the angel of love; rather the infinite spirit of love inspires thy bosom, 
and thou art right while thou singest to raise those innocent little eyes 
to heaven! 


110 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


263. Large masses of black cloud, following one another like a train 
of giants, in sullen silence, answering the azure smiles of heaven that 
gleam between, with a Vulcanian frown. 

264. Why was the Jewish dispensation so strange, so exterior, so 
inadequate ? Why ? Would that the end of the world were come to 
explain the proceedings of Providence during its continuance! But I 
perceive multitudes around me, who know nothing of these doubts and 
wonderings. 

267. I have seen a man, a religious man, press his foot down repeat¬ 
edly on a small ant-hill, while a great number of the poor animals Iiave 
been busy on it. I never did such a thing, never. Oh Providence! 
how many poor insects of thine are exposed to be trodden to death in 
each path ; are not all beings within thy care ? . 

274. How many of these minds are there to whom scarcely any good 
can be done ? They have no excitability. You are attempting to kindle 
a fire of stones. You must leave them as you find them, in permanent 
mediocrity. You waste your time if you do not employ it on materials 
which you can actually modify, while such can be found. I find that 
most people are made only for the common uses of life. 

278. I do not long for this powerful excitation as an instrument of 
vain-glory. It is not a thing which, ambition out of the way, would give 
me no disturbance. No ; it is essential to my enjoyment. It is the native 
impulse of my soul, and it must be gratified, or I shall be either extremely 
degraded, or extremely unhappy; for I am unhappy in as far as I do not 
feel myself advancing toward true greatness. I feel myself like a large 
and pow'erful engine which has not sufficient water or fire to put it com¬ 
pletely in motion. 

- 279. Perhaps you may think that vanity betrays me into a flattering 
estimate of my capacity ; and perhaps it does ; but after having specu¬ 
lated on myself so long, I doubt whether speculation will now be able to 
detect the fallacy. It must be left to experiment. 

280. Here I am now, in health, in a field near C-, musing on plans for 

futurity. What a question it is, “ How—when—where—shall I die ?” 

285. (To the Deity.) Give me all that is necessary to make me, in 
the greatest practicable degree, happy and useful. I feel myself so re¬ 
mote from thee, thou grand Centre, and so torpid! It is as if those 
qualities were extinct in my soul which could make it susceptible of thy 
divine attraction. But oh ! thine energy can reach me even here. At¬ 
tract me, thou great being, within the sphere of thy glorious light; attract 
me within the view of thy throne; attract me into the full emanation of 
thy mercies; attract me within the sphere of thy sacred Spirit’s most 
potent influences. 

I thank thee for the promise and the prospect of an endless life ; I hope 
to enjoy it amid the “ eternal splendors” of thy presence, O Jehovah! 
I thank thee for this introductory stage, so remarkably separated by that 
thick-shaded frontier of death, which I see yonder, from the amplitude 


JOURNAL. 


Ill 


of existence. But oh ! how shall I occupy the space of this stage, so as 
most absolutely tg achieve its capital purpose,—so as to take possession 
of what in Heaven’s judgment is its utmost value. Oh do thou seize my 
existence at its present point, and henceforward guide and model it thy¬ 
self ! Images of excellence, of happiness, of real greatness, often appear 
to me, and look at me with an aspect inexpressibly ardent and emphatic. 
Monitors ! why do you accuse me ? whither would you lead me ? Yes, 

I will follow them, and try what is that scene to which they invite me. 
Oh my Father! give me thy strength; inspire, conduct, and crown, one 
of the unworthiest of all thy sons ! 

286. My life has been a stream spread into listless diffusion, but ere 
long it must assume a defined channel, and a quickened motion. I wait 
to see the valley through which it is to flow ; will it be gentle, or rugged 
and tremendous ? 

291. I have been reading some of Milton’s amazing descriptions of 
spirits, of their manner of life, their powers, their boundless liberty, and 
the scenes which they inhabit or traverse; and my wonted enthusiasm 
kindled high. I almost wished for death; and wondered with great ad¬ 
miration what that life, and what those strange regions really are, into 
which death will turn the spirit free ! I cannot wonder, and I can easily 
j)ardon, tliat this intense and sublime curiosity has sometimes demolished 
the corporeal prison, by flinging it from a precipice, or into the sea.- 
Milton’s description of Uriel and the Sun revived the idea which I have 
before indulged as an imagination of sublime luxury, of committing my¬ 
self to the liquid qlement (supposing some part of the sun a liquid fire), 
of rising on its swells, flashing amidst its surges, darting upwards a 
thousand leagues on the spiry point of a flame, and then falling again 
fearless into the fervent ocean. O ! what is it to be dead; what is it to 
shoot into the expansion, and kindle into the ardors of eternity ; what is 
it to associate with resplendent angels ! 

292. This soul either shall govern this body, or shall quit it. 

293. How much I regret to see so generally abandoned to the weeds 
of vanity that fertile and vigorous space of life, in which might he planted 
the oaks and fruit-trees of enlightened principle and virtuous habit, 
which growing up, would yield to old age an enjoyment, a glory, and a 
shade ! 

297. I hold myself a sacrifice, a victim, consecrated and offered up on 
the great altar of the kingdom of Christ, as one of the human fruits of 
his kingdom, offered by him, the great High Priest, to the God of all. 

300. All pleasure must be bought at the price of pain: the difference 
between false pleasure and true is just this—for the true, the price is 
paid before you enjoy it—for the false, after you enjoy it. 

301. Ego. There is a w’ant of continuity \n your social character. 
You seem broken into fragments. H. Well, I sparkle in fragments. 
Ego. But how much better to shine whole, like a mirror ? 

302. Infidels assume, in subjects which from their magnitude neces- 


112 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


sariiy stretch away into mystery, to pronounce whatever can, or cannot 
be. They seem to say, “ We stand on an eminence sufficient to com¬ 
mand a vision of all things; therefore whatever we cannot see does not 
exist.” 

303. {Power of had habit.') I know from experience that habit can, 
in direct opposition to every conviction of the mind, and but little aided 
by the elements of temptation (such as present pleasure, &c.), induce a 
repetition of the most unworthy actions. The mind is weak where it 
has once given way. It is long before a principle restored can become 
as firm as one that has never been moved. It is as in the case of a 
mound of a reservoir; if this mound has in one place been broken, what¬ 
ever care has been taken to make the repaired part as strong as possible, 

'the probability is that if it give way again, it will be in that place. 

304. (Spoken of a remarkable instance of moral insensibility in the 
approach of death.) “ It is an occultation of mind which nothing but 
death can illuminate.” 

307. One has sometimes continued in a foolish company, for the sake 
of maintaining a virtuous hostility in favor of wisdom; as the Jordan is 
said to force a current quite through the Dead Sea. 

308. There is not on earth a more capricious, accommodating, or 
abused thing than conscience. It would be very possible to exhibit a 
curious classification of consciences in genera and species. What copi¬ 
ous matter for speculation among the varieties of—lawyer’s conscience 
—cleric conscience—lay conscience—lord’s conscience—peasant’s con¬ 
science—hermit’s conscience—tradesman’s conscience—philosopher’s 
conscience—Christian’s conscience—conscience of reason—conscience 
of faith—healthy man’s conscience—sick man’s conscience—ingenious 
conscience—simple conscience, «Sic., &.C., &.C., &.c. 

309. (Suggested by that passage, “Ye have not yet resisted unto 
blood, striving against sin.^’) 

There was once an age, when it had been most unfortunate to be a 
bad man; the good ones were so formidably active and courageous. 
There were a class of men whose profession was martial benevolence. 
They lived but for the annihilation of wrongs; to defend innocence ; to 
dwell in tempests, that goodness might dwell in peace ; to deliver the 
oppressed and captives, and to dash tlie tyrant down. Woe then to the 
castles of proud wickedness, to magicians, robbers, giants, dragons ; for 
the wandering heroes vowed their destruction. This famous age is gone ! 
But in every age it has been deemed honorable to wage war against the 
mischievous things and mischievous beings that have infested the earth. 
“ Galljtnt and heroic world,” we are inclined to exclaim, while we con¬ 
template the mighty resistance made to invading armies, elements, or 
plagues; or the spirited persecution that has been carried on against 
robbers, pirates, monsters, serpents, and wild beasts. Yes, tigers, 
wolves, hysBnas, have been pursued to death. The avenging spirit has 
hunted the timid thief, and even condescended to crush each poor reptile 


JOURNAL. 


113 


that has been deemed offensive. But—“ The world of fools,” we cry, 
while we consider that SIN, the hideous parent of all evils, and for ever 
multiplying her brood of monsters over the world, is quietly, or even 
complacently, allowed here to inhabit and to ravage. Where are the 
heroes “ who resist unto blood, striving against sin ?” Should we weep 
or laugh at the foolishness of mankind, childishly spending their indigna¬ 
tion and force against petty evils, and maintaining a friendly peace with 
the fell and mighty principle of Destruction ? It is just as if men of 
professed courage, employed to go and find and destroy a tiger or a 
crocodile that has spread alarm or havoc, on being asked at their return, 
“ Have you done the deed ?” should reply, “ We have not indeed des¬ 
troyed the tiger or crocodile, but yet we have acted heroically ; we have 
achieved something great; we have killed a wasp.” Or like men 
engaged to exterminate a den of murderers, who being asked at their 
return, “ Have you accomplished the vengeance ?” should say, “ We 
have not destroyed any of the murderers; we did not deem it worth 
while to attempt it; but, tee have lamed one of their dogs.” 

311. (Said of a narrow-minded religionist.) Mr. T. sees religion not 
as a sphere, but as a line; and it is the identical line in which he is 
moving. He is. like an African buffiilo—sees rightforward, but nothing 
on the right hand or the left. He would not perceive a legion of angels 
or of devils at the distance of ten yards on the one side or the other. 

312. (Spoken in defence of the theory which assigns Utility as the 
foundation of all moral principles, and justifies, on some extraordinary 
occasions, the violation of specific moral rules, in order to preserve this 
general object inviolate.) 

Behold, on that eminence, the temple of utility,—let us approach and 
enter. “ I see no open, regular road thither.” “ True, on this side there 
is no regular approach; but we cannot gain the other side, and there is 
a most urgent reason for us to come up to the holy edifice. What then ? 
let us open for ourselves a way; let us cut through the tangled fence; 
let us sacrifice a beautiful shrub, or even a fruit-tree, to clear ourselves 
a path, rather than lose for ever an inestimable advantage. 

“ But granting your principle to be abstractly just, there is this serious 
objection. The right application of it in cases of real life will depend 
on delicate conscience and enlightened calculation. It is needless to 
remark how few of mankind are thus qualified.” “ It is very true, and 
whoever may assume this occasional dispensation from the literal pre¬ 
scriptions of moral law, it belongs exclusively to the men of refined, dis¬ 
interested virtue and clear thought,—the very men who beyond all others 
will be anxiously cautious in using the license, and will regret the 
necessity of using it all. Illustrate by a parallel case. You know two 
ways to a certain town at a considerable distance; the one is what you 
call ‘ the king's high road ’—it is broad, plain, and obvious ; no man can 
lose his way; but this road is rather circuitous, and makes the walk 
long. The other way is shorter, but it is a very slight, almost unknown 
9 


114 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


tract; it passes through the intricacies of a solitary forest, and by some 
very dangerous sjiots. Two persons inquire of you the way to this 
town. The first is a child. You instantly direct l]im to go the plain 
great road, without so much as intimating that there is any other or 
shorter way. The otlier person is a man; a man of sense, with ‘ his 
eyes about him you say to him, ‘ I commonly direct travellers to keep 
the great road, as the most certain and safe, though tedious ; but I think 
such a man as you might venture a shorter path. Observe me carefully; 
having walked such a distance along the side of the hill yonder, you 
must turn to the right, just by an immensely large oak; then wind 
through tlie thick shade, by a path you will ])erceive if you observe 
attentively, till you come suddenly to the edge of a great precipice ; pass 
carefully along the edge of it till you descend into a glen; there you 
will observe an old wooden bridge across a deep water, a little below a 
cataract, the sound of which will seem to make the bridge tremble as 
you pass; but it trembles because it is crazy; be careful, therefore, to 
step softly. You must then pass by the ruins of an abbey, and advance 
forward over a tract of rough ground till you come, &c., &c., (Slc., &c.’ 
Thus in morals I mean to assert that in so7ne rare instances the path of 
duty may lie in a more direct line to its grand object, than by the letter 
of specific laws; but that perhaps only the eminently conscientious and 
intelligent few are competent to judge when this exception takes place, 
and how to dispose of it properly. ‘ This is a curious kind of 'prerogalice 
in morals in favor of your illumin’s.’ I cannot help it. I know that my 
principle, like every other grand principle, may be perverted to a fatal 
consequence, yet I cannot relinquish it; for if it should ever happen (and 
the' case has happened) that the letter of a moral law, owing to some 
extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, should stand in evident 
opposition to that grand uHliiy, for the promotion of which all moral rules 
were appointed by the supreme Governor, it cannot be a question which 
ought to be sacrificed.” 

313. Their courtship was carried on in poetry. Alas! many an 
enamored pair have courted in poetry, and after marriage, lived in prose. 

314. I know no mortification so severe as that which accompanies the 
evinced inefficacy, in one’s own conduct, of a virtuous conviction so 
decisive that it can receive no additional cogency from the resources of 
either the judgment or the heart. 

315. We have such an habitual persuasion of the general depravity 
of human nature, that in falling among strangers we always reckon on 
their being irreligious, till we discover some specific indication of the 
contrary. 

319. After considering the effect which has been produced by the Iliad 
of Ilomer, I am compelled to regard it with the same sentiment as I 
should a knife of beautiful workmanship, which had been the instrument 
used in murdering an innocent family. Recollect as one instance, its 
influence on Alexander, and through him on the world. 


JOURNAL. 


115 


320. Polished steel will not shine in the dark; no more can reason^ 
however refined, shine efficaciously, but as it reflects the light of divine 
truth—shed from heaven. 

321. We are as to the grand system and series of God’s government, 
like a man, wffio, confined in a dark room, should observe, through a 
chink of the wall, some large animal passing by ;—he sees but an ex¬ 
tremely narrow strip of the object at once as it moves by, and is utterly 
unable to form an idea of the size, proportions, or shape of it. 

323. How dangerous to defer those momentous reformations which 
conscience is solemnly preaching to the heart! If they are neglected, 
the difficulty and indisposition are increasing every month. The mind 
is receding, degree after degree, from the warm and hopeful zone; till, 
at last, it will enter the arctic circle, and become fixed in relentless and 
eternal ice ! 

323. * I have sometimes thought, if the sun were an intelligence, he 
would be horribly incensed at the world he is appointed to enlighten ; 
such a tale of ages, exhibiting a tiresome repetition of stupidity, follies, 
and crimes. 

324. “ Nothing new under the sun.” I compare life to a little wilder¬ 
ness, surrounded by a high dead wall. Within this space we muse and 
walk in quest of the new and the happy, forgetting the insuperable limit, 
till, with surprise, we find ourselves stopped by the dead wall; we turn 
away, and muse and walk again, till, on another side, we find ourselves 
close against the dead wall. Whichever way we turn—still the same. 

326. Exquisitely curious appearance of the moonshine on the rippled 
surface of a broad river (Thames), like an infinite multitude of little 
fiery gems moving and sparkling through endless confusion; or like bril¬ 
liant insects sporting, all intermingled and never tired or reposing, the 
most vivid frisks. At a great distance the appearance is lost in an indis¬ 
tinct, diffused light; but they are there as busy as they are here. How 
busy activity can go on in the other regions of the earth, or another part 
of the town, without knowing or caring whether it is so here or not. 

328. Regret that interesting ideas and feelings are the comets of the 
mind; they transit ofi*. Qu. What mode of making them fixed stars, 
and thus the mind a firmament always resplendent ? 

330. Argument from miracles for the truth of the Christian doctrines. 
Surely it is fair to believe that those who received from heaven superhu¬ 
man power, received likewise superhuman wisdom. Having rung the 
great bell of the universe, the sermon to follow must be extraordinary. 

331. I stoutly maintained in a company lately, that the English are the 
most barbarous people in the world. I cited a number of prominent facts; 
among others, that bull-baiting was lately defended and sanctioned in the 
grand talisman of the national humanity and virtue—the Parliament. 

349. Met a number of men one after another. My urbanity was not 
up to the point of saying “ Good morning,” till I had passed the last of 
them, who had nothing to attract civility more than the others, except 


116 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


his being the last. If a Frenchman and an Englishman were shown a 
dozen persons, and under the necessity of choosing one of them to talk 
an hour with, the Frenchman would choose the first in the row, and the 
Englishman the last. 

351. Poor horse! to draw both your load and your driver: so it is ;— 
those that have power to impose burdens, have power and will to impose 
tlieir vile selves in addition. En passant, reflections here;—how difler- 
ent is this one fact to me and to tlie horse I this moment looked at; I 
think—the horse feels ; I am turning a sentence, the horse pants in suf¬ 
fering; how languid a feeling is that of sympathy ! Nothing mortifles 
me more tlian that defect of the vitality of sympathy, with which I am 
for ever compelled to tax myself. 

353. (Little bird in a tree.) Bird, ’tis pity such a delicious note should 
be silenced by winter, death, and above all by annihilation. I do not, and 
I cannot believe that all these little spirits of melody are but the snuff’of 
the grand taper of life, the mere vapor of existence to vanish for ever. 

*356. Many images are called up in the mind by moral analogies which 
were not recognized before, i. e. were not noticed with a, distinct thought. 

364. If a stranger on the road is anxious to have you for a companion, 
it is commonly a proof that his company is not worth having. 

370. How much a traveller’s attention is commonly engrossed by the 
works of art, houses, carriages, &c.; and how little is it directed to the 
endless varieties of nature. 

371. An old stump of an oak, with a few young shoots on its almost 
bare top. Analogy: Youthful follies growing on old age. 

372. A still pool amid a most barren heath, shining resplendently in 
the morning sunshine. Analogy: Talents accompanied with moral bar¬ 
renness, i. e. indolence or depravity. 

379. No scheme so mortifying as that which employs large means to 
accomplish little ends. Let your system be magnitude of end with the 
utmost economy of means.* 

382. I want to extract and absorb into my soul the sublime mysti¬ 
cism that pervades all nature, but I cannot. I look on all the vast scene 
as I should on a column sculptured with ancient hieroglyphics, saying, 
“ There is significance there,” and despairing to read. At every turn it 
is as if I met a ghost of solemn, mysterious and undefinable aspect; but 
while 1 attempt to arrest it, to ask it the veiled secrets of the world, it 
vanishes. The world is to me what a beautiful deaf and dumb woman 


* “ It (the Bible Society) possesses every characteristic of the work of 
God, in which the simplest means are made to produce the greatest effects; 
where there is the utmost economy in the contrivance, and the greatest 
splendor and magnificence in the design. The imbecility of man appears 
in the littleness of his ends, which he accomplishes for the most part by 
complicated and laborious operations Omnipotence, on the contrary, 
places opulence in the end and parsimony in the means.”— Hall, Works^ 
vol. iv., p. 3S3. 


- JOURNAL. 117 

would be; I can see the fair features, but there is not language to send 
forth and impart to me the element of soul. 

383. Fancy makes vitality where it does not find it; to it all things 
are alive. On this unfrequented walk even the dry leaf that is stirred 
by a slight breath of air across the path, seems for a moment to have its 
little life and its tiny purpose. 

384. There is an argumentative way, not only of discussing to ascer¬ 
tain truth, but also of enforcing acknowledged and familiar truth.—Bax¬ 
ter—Law. 

385. Let a man compare with each other, and also bring to the ab¬ 
stract scale, the sentiment which follows the performance of a kind action 
and that which follows a vindictive triumph; still more if the good was 
done in return for evil. How much pleasure then will that man ensure, 
—yes, what a vast share of it! whose deliberate system it is, that his 
every action and speech shall be beneficent! 

392. Most remarkable appearance of a field full of oaks cut down, 
disbarked and embrowned by time. Gave me forcibly the idea of an 
assemblage of giant monsters ; or of the skeletons of a giants’ field of 
battle. 

393. Some one spoke of altering and modernizing the style of one of 
the most eloquent writers of the last century. [F.] “ You cannot alter 
his diction; it is not an artificial fold which may he taken off, and an¬ 
other superinduced on the mass of his thoughts. His language is iden¬ 
tical with his thought; the thought lives through every article of it. If 
you cut, you wound. His diction is not the clothing of his sentiments, 
—it is the skin; and to alter the language would be to flay the senti¬ 
ments alive.” 

394. Of all the kinds of writing and discourse, that appears to me in¬ 
comparably the best, which is distinguished by grand masses, and promi¬ 
nent bulks; which stand out in magnitude from the tame ground work, 
and impel the mind by a succession of separate strong impulses, rather 
than a continuity of equable sentiment. One has read and heard very 
sensible discourses, which resembled a plain, handsome brick wall,—all 
looks very well, ’tis regularly built, high, &c., but ’tis all alike ; it is flat; 
you go on and on, and notice no one part more than another; each indivi¬ 
dual brick is nothing, and you pass along, and soon forget utterly the wall 
itself. Give me, on the contrary, a style of writing and discourse that 
shall resemble a wall that has the striking irregularity of pilasters, pic¬ 
tures, niches, and statues. 

395. Mr. T.’s discourse is good but attenuated: he has a clue of thread 
of gold in his hand, and he unwinds for you ell after ell; but give me 
the man who will throw the clue at me at once, and let me unwind it; 
and then show in his hand another ready to follow. 

396. There is a great deficiency of what may be called conclusive 
writing and speaking. How seldom we feel at the end of the paragraph 
or discourse that something is settled and done! It lets our habit of think- 


118 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ing and feeling just he as it teas. It rather carries on a parallel to the 
line of the mind, at a peaceful distance, than fires down a tangent to 
smite across it. We are not compelled to say with ourselves emphati¬ 
cally, “ Yes, it is so! it must be so; that is decided to all eternity!” 
The subject in question is still left afloat, and you find in your mind no 
new impulse to action, and no clearer view of the end at which your 
action should aim, I want the speaker or writer ever and anon, as he 
ends a series of paragraphs, to settle some point irrevocably with a vigor¬ 
ous knock of persuasive decision, like an auctioneer, who with a rap of 
his hammer says, “ There! that’s yours; I’ve done with it; now for 
the next ” 

397. “ I know as well as you the folly of wandering for ever among 
the abstractions of philosophy, while truth’s business and ours is with 
the real world. I am endeavoring to learn truth from observations on 
facts. I am trying to take off the hide of the actual world, but it must 
be curried by philosophy, you will grant me, to be made fit for all the 
useful purposes.” 

402. How little of our knowledge of mankind is derived from inten¬ 
tional accurate observation. Most of it has, unsought, found its way 
into the mind from the continual presentations of the objects to our un¬ 
thinking view. It is a knowledge of sensation more than of reflection. 
Such knowledge is vague and superficial. There is no science of human 
nature in it. It is rather a habit of feeling than an act of intellect. It 
perceives obvious, palpable peculiarities ; but nice distinctions, delicate 
shades, are invisible to it. A philosopher will study all men with as 
accurate observation as he would some individual on whose dispositions, 
opinions, or whims, he believed his fate to depend. 

405. Lanthorn in a dark night—interesting appearance of the teno- 
brious glimmer it throws on the nearest shrubs and trees ; and of the 
thick darkness that seems to lurk and frown close behind. 

407. It would be interesting to look back on all the past of one’s life, 
to see how many, and count how many, vivid little points of recollection 
still twinkle through its shade. My mind just now caught sight of one 
of these stars of retrospect, at the distance of sixteen or seventeen years. 
It was my once (in a summer evening, the sun not set) lying on my 
back on the grass, and holding a small earthen vessel, out of which I 
had just sipped my evening milk, between my face and the sky, in such 
a way that a few of the soft rays glanced on my eyes, and seemed to 
form a little living circle of lustre, round an eyelet hole, through which 
I fancied visions of entrancing beauty. 

408. Burke’s sentences are pointed at the end,—instinct with pungent 
sense to the last syllable. They are like a charioteer’s whip, which not 
only has a long and eflfective lash, but cracks, and inflicts a still smarter 
sensation at the end. They are like some serpents of which I have 
heard it vulgarly said, their life is the fiercest in the tail. 

. 410. I have often noticed the process in my mind, when in the outset 


JOURNAL. 


119 


of a journey or day, I have set myself to observe whatever should fall 
within my sphere. For some time at first I can do no more than take 
an account of bare facts ; as, there is a house ; there a man ; there a 
tree ; such a speech uttered ; such an incident happens, &c., &c. After 
some time, however, a larger enginery begins to work ; I feel more than 
a simple perception of objects ; they become environed with an atmo¬ 
sphere, and shed forth an emanation. They come accompanied with 
trains of images, moral analogies, and a wide diffused, vitalized, and 
indefinable kind of sentimentalism. Generally, if one can compel the 
mind to the labor of the first part of the process, the interesting sequel will 
soon follow. After one has passed a few hours in this element of reve¬ 
lation, which presents this old world like a new vision all around, one is 
ashamed of so many hundred walks and days which have been vacant of 
observation and reflection. 

416. (Of an extremely depraved child.) “ I never saw so much 
essence of Devil put in so small a vessel.” 

417. How large a portion of the material that books are made of, is 
destitute of any peculiar distinction. “ It has,” as Pope said of women, 
just “ no character at all.” An accumulation of sentences and pages of 
vulgar truisms and candle-light sense, which any one was competent to 
write, and which no one is interested in reading, or cares to remember, 
or could remember if he cared. This is the common of literature—of 
space wide enough, of indifferent production, and open to all. The pages 
of some authors, on the contrary, give one the idea of enclosed gardens 
and orchards, and one says, “ Ha! that is the man’s own.” 

418. I have often contended that attachments between friends and 
lovers cannot be secured strong, and perpetually augmenting, except by 
the intervention of some interest which is not personal, but which is 
common to them both, and towards which their attentions and passions 
are directed with still more animation than even towards each other. If 
the whole attention is to be directed, and the whole sentimentalism of the 
heart concentrated on each other ; if it is to be an unvaried, “ I ioioards you, 
and you towards mef as if each were to the other, not an ally or com¬ 
panion joined to pursue happiness, but the very end and object—happi¬ 
ness itself; if it is the circumstance of reciprocation itself, and not what 
is reciprocated, that is to supply perennial interest to affection ; if it is to 
be mind still reffecting back the gaze of mind, and reffecting it again, 
cherub towards cherub, as on the ark, and no luminary or glory between 
them to supply beams and warmth to both,—I foresee that the hope will 
disappoint, the plan will fail. Affection, on these terms, will be reduced 
to the condition of a famishing animal’s stomach, the opposite sides of 
which, for want of pabulum introduced, meet and digest, and consume 
each other. Attachment must burn in oxygen, or it will go out; and, 
by oxygen, I mean a mutual admiration and pursuit of virtue, improve¬ 
ment, utility, the pleasures of taste, or some other interesting concern, 
which shall be the element of their commerce, and make them love each 


120 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


other not only for each other, but as devotees to some third object which 
they both adore. The affections of the soul will feel a dissatisfaction 
and a recoil if, as they go forth, they are entirely intercepted and 
stopped by any object that is not ideal; they wish rather to be like rays 
of light glancing on the side of an object, and then sloping and passing 
away ; they wish the power of elongation, through a series of interest¬ 
ing points, on towards infinity. 

Reading lately some of Newton’s Letters to his wife, I wondered at the 
phenomenon of so warm and long protracted an affection, or rather 
passion, with so little of this oxygen ; no literature, no romancings of 
fancy, no excursions over the creation, no moral discussions, no character- 
criticism, no plans of improvement, no analysing of each other’s qualities 
and defects; no, all mere I and you, you and 1. A measure of piety 
indeed there is; but without any variety or specific thought. 

Human society is a vast circle of beings on a plain, in the midst of 
which stands the shrine of goodness and happiness, inviting all to 
approach; now the attached pairs in this circle should not be continually 
looking on each other, but should turn their faces very often toward this 
central object, and as they advance, they will, like radii from the circum¬ 
ference to the centre, continually become closer to each other, as they 
approximate to their mutual and ultimate object. 

420. “ I still less and less like the wealthy part of your circle (H.’s). 
It appears to me, that the main body of principle is merged. As to reli¬ 
gion, sir, they are in a religious diving-bell; religion is not circumam¬ 
bient, but a little is conveyed down into the worldly depth, where they 
breathe by a sort of artificial inlet—a tube.” 

421. Melancholy musings in the direction of fatalism. One seems to 
see all how it is to be, as to one’s friends, as to one^s self Unfortunate 
habits have been formed, and threaten to reign till death. Instruction, 
truth, just reach the heart to fall inefficacious. One^augurs the sequel 
from the first part; as in a common-place novel, one can see from the 
first chapter what is to happen forward to the close. 

422. The importance and necessity of a ruling passion—i. e., some 
grand object, the view of which kindles all the ardor the soul is capable 
of, to attain or accomplish it—possibility of creating a ruling passion 
asserted. 

423. A reflection that never occurs without the bitterest pain; one 
longs for affection—for an object to love devotedly,—for an interesting 
friend to associate and commune with—meanwhile the Deity offers 
his friendship and communion, and is refused, or forgotten!!! There 
are, too, the sages of all ages—there is IMoses, Daniel, Elijah; and you 
complain of want of society!!! 

424. The whole system of life goes on this principle of selling one’s 
self: then the question of estimates should for ever recur—“ my time 
for this ?”—“ and this 

425. Idea partly serious, partly comic, of formally judging myself 


JOURNAL. 121 

sentencing', and then hanging myself ; the thousand faults that still at¬ 
tach to me might almost tempt to this. 

427. (Ruling passion again.) Necessity of pursuing some grand 
purpose of existence as a sportsman does a fox—at all hazards, over 
hill and dale and brook; through wood and brake, and everything and 
everywhere, unless it go into the earth, or into the clouds ;—and here, too, 
our moral chase shall follow ; for the bodij shall enter the dust—the soul 
ascend! 

428. (Fragment of a letter, never sent.) My dear Sir, I consider 

each of us as having nearly described a semicircle of life since I saw 
you last, and it is with great pleasure I anticipate the completing of the 
circle in meeting you again in little more than a week. It would be 
amusing tor each to exhibit memoirs of the incidents and of the course. 
I was lately considering what would be the effect of a law obliging each 
person to present, at appointed periods, a history of his life during the 
interval, to a kind of morality Court authorized to investigate, censure, 
and reward. I was considering how, in that case, I should dispose of, 
and where I should conceal, a considerable quantity of the materials 
which ought to be exhibited in 7ny history, or, if I could not conceal 
them, in what specious language it would be possible to describe them, 
so as to obtain the tolerance of this high and venerable court. I con¬ 
cluded that the best expedient would be, to get myself appointed one of 
the judges. ^ 

What a delightful thing it would be, to be able honestly at all times to 
approve one’s self entirely ! I have sometimes passed through a series 
of deep and wondering reflection, beginning from myself, and extending 
over and around that vast mass of human existence I have been observ¬ 
ing; when at last the thought, that an invisible and omniscient Power 
is all the while taking all these things that I look at, or hear, or do, into 
his estimate, expanded as it were in the heavens, an ample counterpart 
to this world of active character below;—when this thought has light¬ 
ened from the sky, it has struck as a thought of alarm; it has even 
sometimes appeared with the aspect of a new thought, announcing a 
truth not known, or not felt before. I have finished the reflections by 
determining, that as there really is an estimate above, co-extending with 
the advance of life below, a wise man will, to the end of time, associate 
the thought of that estimate with every act of that life. I hope hence¬ 
forth to live incessantly under the influence of this thought; and then I 
should neither care to be a judge in the court I have supposed, nor be at 
all afraid to present myself at its bar. 

431. Told that Fawcett concluded a charity sermon by saying, When 
I look at the objects of this charity, I feel I cannot say too much; v^hen 
I look at this assembly, I feel I cannot say too little.” On hearing this 
I exclaimed, “ Excellent! artful! eloquent!” but question. Is that artful, 
or will it be effectual, the policy of which is so instantaneously seen 
through ? 


122 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


434. (In the vestry of Battersea meeting, during evening service.) 
Most emphatic feeling of my individuality—my insulated existence— 
except that close and interminable connexion, from the very necessity of 
existence, with the Deity. To the continent of Human Nature, I am a 
small island near its coast; to the Divine Existence I am a small 
'peninsula. 

435. How impotent often is the pain of guilt as a stimulant to amend¬ 
ment. Instance myself just now, in regard to letters I ought to have 
written long ago. 

436. My efforts to enter into possession of the vast world of moral 
and metaphysical truth, are like those of a mouse attempting to gnaw 
through the door of a granary. 

439. Threw (in a journey between Bristol and Cheddar) some large 
stones down a deep old pit, vnth apparently a great depth of water at 
the bottom, a dark, sullen glimmer*of which the eye occasionally caught. 
I felt almost a shuddering sensation at tlie gloomy and furious sound of 
the water, in the impetuous commotion caused by these stones. Strongly 
imagined how it would be for myself to fall down. 

440. Entered a large cavern, sloping' down very steep, where a great 
number of human bones have been found. Saw a considerable quantity 
of them myself. This cavern was itself but lately found. It was broken 
into by digging away the rock. No conjecture bow or when these bones- 
came there. 

445. From what principle in human nature is it that if a child is in¬ 
clined to cry—I do not mean a very young cliild—one of the readiest 
methods of prevention is to affect to whimper yourself ? 

447. Mr. H. and I looked a considerable time with much curiosity 
and gratification in one of the irregularly cut pendant glasses of a lustre 
in which we saw the same beautiful display of colored tints and bril¬ 
liancies as in the prism, only more irregular and variegated. It w^as not 
the glass toy we for a moment thought about, but the strange and beau¬ 
tiful vision, and those laws of nature that could produce it. A young 
lady present, of polished and expensive education, large fortune, and 
fond of personal and furniture ornaments, expressed sincerely her won¬ 
der at our childish fancy in finding anything to please us in such an 
object; and said she would reserve the first thing of this kind she should 
meet with, if no other ‘children claimed it, for one of us. I did not fail 
to observe the circumstance, as supplying another instance, in addition 
to the ten thousand one has met with before, of persons who never saw 
the world around them, who are strangers to all its witcheries of beauty, 
and who, at the same time, indulge a ridiculous passion for the petty 
productions of art subserving vanity. 

448. “ How gloomy that range of lamps looks (at some distance along 
the border of a common)—how dark it is all around them.” Yes, like 
the lights that are disclosed to us from the other world, which simply 
tell us, that there in the solemn distance, where they burn encircled 
with darkness, that world is, but shed no light on the region. 


JOURNAL. 


123 


449. Interesting conversation with Mr. S. on education. Astonish¬ 
ment and grief at the folly, especially in times like the present, of those 
parents who totally forget, in the formation of their children’s habits, to in¬ 
spire that vigorous independence which acknowledges the smallest possible 
number of wants, and so avoids or triumphs over the negation of a thou¬ 
sand indulgences, by always having been taught and accustomed to do 
without them. “ How many things,” said Socrates, “ I do not want.” 

450. How precious a thing is youthful energy; if only it could be 
preserved entirely englohed as it were within the bosom of the young 
adventurer, till he can come and offer it forth a sacred emanation in yon¬ 
der temple of truth and virtue ; but, alas ! all along as he goes toward 
it, he advances through an avenue, formed by a long line of tempters 
and demons on each side, all prompt to touch him with their conductors, 
and draw this divine electric element, with which he is charged, away ! 

451. Children’s ball, —a detestable vanity. Mamma solicitously busy 
for several weeks previously, with all the assistance too of milliners 
and tasteful friends, with lengthened dissertations, for the sole purpose of 
equipping two or throe children to appear in one of these miserable 
exhibitions. The whole business seems a contrivance, expressly in¬ 
tended to concentrate to a focus of preternatural heat and stimulus every 
vanity and frivolity of the time, in order to blast for ever the simplicity 
of the little souls, and kindle their vain propensities into a thousand times 
the force that mere nature could ever have supplied. 

453. Scsostris, Semiramis, Ninus, &c. These mighty names remain 
now only as small {)oints, emerging a little above that ocean under which 
all their actions are buried. We can just descry, by the dying glim¬ 
mer of ancient history, that that ocean is of blood! 

454. In books one takes up occasionally, one finds a consolation for 
the impossibility of reading many books, by seeing how many might 
have been spared. How little that is new or striking in the great 
department of religion, morals, and sentiment! Might not all the 
sermon-books, for instance, in the English language, after the excep¬ 
tion of three or four dozen volumes, be committed to the fire without any 
cause of regret ? 

455. Few have been sufficiently sensible of the importance of that 
economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order 
of books. Why should a man, except for some special reason, read a 
very inferior book, at the very time that he might be reading one of the 
highest order? 

456. Desideratum. A comprehensive estimate of the real effect pro¬ 
duced by preaching. 

459. Very advantageous exercise to incite attentive observation and 
sharpen the discriminating faculty, to compel one’s self to sketch the 
character of each person one knows. 

460. What given force beyond, for instance, what my mind can infuse 
into argument, illustration, and persuasion, would be requisite to make 


124 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


religious sentiments impinge so powerfully on the mind of S-, as to 

stick fast on it; or convictions respecting the subject of amusements on 

the minds of B-and W-? Tliere is a degree somewhere in the 

scale, I suppose, that would; but probably that degree would be a strain 
of eloquence impossible to less than an angel. 

464. Struck, in two instances, with the immense importance, to a man 
of sense, of obtaining a conversational predominance, in order to be of 
any use in any company exceeding the smallest number. Example, W. 
Frend. 

465. An opponent maintained that I ought to contribute to the execu¬ 
tion of every law of the state I live in, even though I disapprove some of 
those laws in my private judgment. Denied. How can such obligation 
come ? It is confessed, in the first instance, that in general my own 
judgment and conscience form the supreme law. Then, if one man 
assumes to interfere with the dictates of my own mind, and enjoins me a 
course of action opposite to my convictions, I spurn the assumption. 
But so I do likewise if two men thus dictate in opposition to my moral 
sense. If three men do this, I do still the same. If five hundred, if a 
thousand, if ten thousand, I still do the same, and deem that duty binds 
me to do so. I ask these, What is this thing you call a state ? what is 
that moral authority assumed by it over my conscience, if it merely con¬ 
sists of these same men whom individually, and in the accumulation of an 
indefinite number, I have already refused to obey ? 

468. Zealously asserted the rational soul, and future existence of 
brutes. Their souls made of the worse end of the celestial manufacture 
of mind, which was not quite fine enough to make into men. Various 
strong facts cited to prove that they, at least some of them, possess what 
we strictly mean by mind, reason, &c. 

471. All political institutions will probably, from whatever cause, tend 
to become worse by time. If a system were now formed, that should 
meet all the philosopher’s and the philanthropist’s wishes, it would 
still have the same tendency ; only I do hope that henceforward to the 
end of time, men’s minds will be intensely awake to the nature and 
operation of their institutions ; so that after a new era shall commence, 
governments shall not slide into depravity without being keenly watched, 
nor be watched without the sense and spirit to arrest their deterioration. 

472. It is a most amazing thing that young people never consider they 
shall grow old. I would, to young women especially, renew the monition 
of this anticipation every hour of every day. I wish we could make all 
the cryers, watchmen, ballad-singers, and even parrots, repeat to them 

continually,' “ You will be an old woman—you will—” “ and you.”_ 

Then, if they have left themselves to depend, almost entirely, as most of 
them do, on exterior and casual accommodations, they will be wretchedly 
neglected. No beaux will then draw a chair close to them, and sweetly 
simper, and wldsper that the bowers of paradise did not afford so delight¬ 
ful a place. 



JOURNAL. 


125 


474. “ Paid the debt of nature.” No; it is not paying a debt^—it is 
rather like bringing a note to a bank to obtain solid gold in exchange for 
it. In this case you bring this cumbrous body, which is nothing worth, 
and which you could not wish to retain long; you lay it down, and 
receive for it from the eternal treasures—liberty, victory, knowledge, 
rapture. 

477. Against amusements, defended on the plea of necessary relaxa¬ 
tion. I maintain that excitement is excitability too. An animated, 
affecting interest, supplies to the mind more than it consumes. The further 
a man advances in the ardor that belongs to a noble employment and 
object, the more mightily he lives. Other men will perhaps advance with 
him to a certain point, and there they stop—he goes on; now the ratio 
of his progress and his animation is comparably greater on that far- 
advanced ground beyond where they left him, than within an equal space 
in the earlier part of the course. The mind inspired with this enthusiasm 
asserts its grandeur. It expands toward eternity, anticipative of its des¬ 
tiny. It lives, as Alonzo says, not by the vulgar calculation of months 
and years, but along the progression of sublime attainment, and amid the 
flames of an ardor which whirls it like a comet towards the sun. 

Would you be a stranger to this energy of soul—or, feeling it, would 
you prostitute it to seek a poor factitious interest in systematic trifling? 

479. Theology and philosophy have been entirely separated by most 
divines, and some have attempted an awkward association of them; they 
joined them without producing unity or union. All the emanations of 
both ought to converge to one focus ; and thence, combined and identifled, 
dart forward, a living beam of light, in infinitum. 

485. The very intelligent Mr. G. reasoned against the Calvinistic 
doctrine of original depravity,—evidently, I perceived, from his feeling 
respecting that of eternal punishments. Believing this last, he was 
anxious, as a kind of palliation of its severity, to make man as accounta¬ 
ble a being as possible, by making his vice entirely optional, and so 
making all his depravity his crime. 

487. In a conversation one of the speakers expressed his wish (and 
illustrated his idea by a very ingenious comparison, of a West-India 
merchant importing a small number of yams sometimes as a slight item 
of his cargo), a wish that the friends of religion, sinking the importance 
of the little nominal speciflc distinctions of Baptist, Presbyterian, Inde¬ 
pendent, &c., which have caused so much demarcation and warfare, 
should transfer the emphasis on the grand generic term and character— 
Christian, and cease to cite or allude to, or meet one another, but undei> 
this distinction. Ego. “ Sir, this cannot be done while there is so little 
of the vital element of religion in the world ; because it is so shallow, 
these inconsiderable points stand so prominent above the surface, and 
occasion obstruction and mischief; when the powerful spring-tide of 
piety and mind shall rise, these joints will be swallowed up and disap¬ 
pear.” 


126 


LIFE OF JOH.N FOSTER. ^ 


488. In conversation at W—’s, had a splendid revel of imagination 
among the stars, caused by the mention of Herschel’s telescope, and 
some astronomical facts asserted by him. The images, like Lee’s poe¬ 
try, were, from a basis of excellence. Hung away into extravagance. 
Lut it is a striking rellection, that when the wild dream of imagination 
.s past, the thing is still real; there is a sun ; there are stars and sys¬ 
tems ; innumerable worlds, on which the soberest depositions of science 
far transcend all the visions that fancy can open to enthusiasm ! 

490. What is that sentiment approaching to a sad pleasure, which a 
mind of pr®found reflection sometimes feels in a far inward incommuni¬ 
cable grief, though the fixed expectation of calamity, or even guilt, were 
its cause ? . 

491. How thoughtless often is a moralist's or a preacher’s enumera¬ 
tion of what a firm or pious mind may hear with patience, or even com¬ 
placency ; as disease, pain, reduction of fortune, loss of friends, calumny, 
&c., for he can easily add words; —alas ! how oppressive is the steady 
anticipation only of any one of these evils ! 

493. One object of life should be to accumulate a great number of 
grand questions to be asked and resolved in eternity. We now ask the 
sage, the genius, the philosopher, the divine,—none can tell; but we will 
open our series to other respondents, —v/e will ask angels—God. 

494. How every hostile feeling becomes mitigated into something like 
kindness, when its object perhaps lately proud, assuming, unjust, is 
now seen oppressed into dejection by calamity. The most cruel wild 
beast, or more cruel man, if seen languishing in death, and raising 
toward us a feeble and supplicating look, would certainly move our pity. 
How is this ? perhaps the character is not even supposed to be really 
changed amid the suffering that modifies its expression. De we uncon¬ 
sciously take anything like a tender feeling, even for self, as a proof of 
some little goodness, or possibility of goodness ? Is it for those beings 
alone that we feel nothing, who discover a hard and stupid indifference 
to self, and everything besides ? Perhaps any sentient being, the worst 
existent or possible, might be in a situation to move and to justify our 
sympathy. What then shall we think of that theology which represents 
the men whom God has made most like himself, as exulting for ever 
and ever in the most dreadful sufferings of the larger part of those who 
liave been their fellow-inhabitants of this world ? 

495. One should think that a tender friendship might become more 
intimate and entire the older the parties grew; as two trees planted near 
each other, the higher they grow and the more widely they spread,—inter¬ 
mingle more completely their branches and their foliage. (N. B. This 
was absolutely my own conception; but I found the very same idea 
lately in Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd.*) 

* But we’ll grow auld togither, an’ ne’er find 
The loss o’ youth, when love grows on the mind. 


JOURNAL. 


127 


496. (On tlie question of the equality of men and women.) A lady, 
in answer to my very serious reasoning to prove that, if naturally equal, 
nothing can bring the woman to an actual equality, but the same course 
of vigorous mental exertion which professional men are obliged to go 
through, said, “ Well, we shall be content to occupy a lower ground of 
intellectual character and attainment.” I replied, “ You may then be 
consoled; we from that more elevated region shall sometimes, in the 
intervals of our grand interests and adventures, look down complacently 
and converse with you, till the emphasis of some momentous subject 
return, and call us to transact with our equals. It will be ours to inhabit 
the paradise on the high summit of that mount which you will never 
climb; we shall eat habitually the fruit of the trees of knowledge, but 
we will kindly sometimes throw you a few apples down the declivity.” 

497. I am going to wade the stream of misery, and I see an inacces¬ 
sible bank before me on the other side; whei'e I may find it accessible I 
do not yet know ! 

498. Strong imagination of sitting or lying awake in a solitary room, 
and a ghost entering and sitting down in the room opposite me. What 
an intense feeling it would be while I reciprocated the fixed silent glare. 

500. (Fragment of a letter never sent, to a young woman.) “ There 
is one question, my friend, to which you cannot be indifferent. Are you 
happy ? I contemplate many mournful scenes ; I converse with many 
gloomy ideas ; I behold many miserable persons ; and the impression of 
such objects makes me sometimes ask. Is any one truly happy ? Is 
there such a blest mortal in the world ? Show me that person. Tell 
me now, do I see that person when I see you? Do I indeed ? Let me 
be assured of that, and I would see you often. I would look at you 
with fixed attention. ‘ Happiness ?’ I would say to myself, and continue 
to regard you, ‘ What are its signs ? Does it sparkle through her eyes ? 
Does it play in her smiles ? Does it breathe music in her words ?’ 
Rather perhaps I ought to ask, ‘What kind of sentiments does she 
express ? Wliat kind of actions does she perform ?’ Yes, I would ob¬ 
serve you with more patience than an astronomer observes the moon. 
With sincere curiosity I would inquire of you, the art of being happy ; 
for the happy are generous, one should think. The person who would 
not communicate such an art, certainly does not possess it. I would 
call you ‘ the Happy Girl,’ you would scarcely need any other name; 
this would be a sufficient distinction, for who could claim it besides ? 
But do you know yourself by this name ? It is time to recollect that 

See yon twa elms that grow up side by side— 

Suppose them some years syne bridegroom an’ bride; 

Nearer an’ nearer ilka year they’ve prest, 

Till wide their spreading branches are increas’d. 

An’ in their mixture now are fully blest. 

This shields the other frae the eastlin blast; 

That in return defends it frae the wast. 

Gentle Shepherd. —Act I., Scene 2. 


128 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


perhaps the person I am fancying to myself is not really you; perhaps 
you are not happy. That were melancholy. Ymi unhappy ? From 
what cause ? Are you guilty ? Oh ! if you have blighted the sweet 
lily of innocence with folly or crime, you have then some reason to be 
sad. But are not you pure ? Have you not always avoided, with 
watchful aversion, everything that could stain your heart or your charac¬ 
ter ? Cannot you reflect on each season of your life, and on each situa¬ 
tion in which the Witness of all things has seen you, without a blush ? 
Can you not ? Are not the records of memory so iiiir, that you could 
with pleasure unfold them to a virtuous friend ? Is there any part on 
which conscience has fixed a black seal] And are not your present prin¬ 
ciples, feelings, and designs, such as you might Vv'ith honor avow ?” 

501. I doubt if S. is not too innocent to become sublimely excellent; 
her heart is purity and kindness ; her recollections are complacent; her 
wishes and intentions are all good. In such a mind conscience becomes 
effeminate for want of hard exercise. She is exempted from those re¬ 
vulsions of the heart, that remorse, those self-indignant regrets, those 
impetuous convictions, which sometimes assist to scourge the mind 
away from its stationary habits into such a region of daring and arduous 
virtue, as it would never have reached, nor even thought of, but for this 
mighty impulse of pain. Witness Albany in Cecilia. Vehement emo¬ 
tion, mortifying contrast, shuddering alarm, sting the mind into an exer¬ 
tion of power it was unconscious of before, and urge it on with restless 
velocity toward the attainment of that moral eminence, short of which it 
would equally scorn and dread to repose. We fly from pain or terror 
more eagerly than we pursue good;—but if both these causes aid our 
advance! 

A young eagle perhaps would never have quitted the warm luxury 
of its nest, and towered into the sky, if the parent had not pushed it, 
or the tempest flung it, off, and thus compelled it to fly by the danger 
of perishing. Is it not too possible that S. may repose complacently in 
the innocent softness of her nest, and die without ever having unfolded 
the wing of sublime adventure. At sight of such a death one would 
weep with tenderness, not glow with admiration; it is a charming wo¬ 
man that falls, not a radiant angel that rises. (I feel this is cumbrous 
and obscure, but there is truth in what I mean, that the consciousness 
of no ill precludes, in some degree, the conception of eminent good ; it 
feels too safe, it produces a habit far too quiescent; the noblest purposes 
can never be either conceived or executed but in a state of ardent ex¬ 
citement, and the painful emotions of conscience are among the most 
powerful causes of such excitement.) 

503. What an astonishing mass of pabulum is consumed to sustain 
an individual human being! How much nourishment I have consumed 
by eating and drinking; how much air by breathing; how much of the 
element of affection my heart has claimed, and has sometimes lived in 
luxury, and sometimes starved! Above all! what an infinite sum of 


JOURNAL. 


129 


those instructions which are to feed the moral and intellectual man, 
have I consumed, and how poor the consequence ! What a despicable, 
dwarfish growth I exhibit to myself and to God at this hour ! 

Yes, how much it takes in this last respect, to grow how little! 
Millions of valuable thoughts I suppose have passed through my mind. 
How often my conscience has admonished me! How many thousands 
of pious resolutions ! How all nature has preached to me ! How day 
and night, and solitude and the social scenes, and books and the bible, 
the gravity of sermons and the flippancy of fools, life and death, the 
ancient world and the modern, sea and land, and the omnipresent God ! 
have all concurred to instruct me! and behold the miserable result of 
all! ! 1 wonder if the measure of effect be a ten thousandth part of the 

bulk, to call it so, of this vast combination of causes. How far is this 
strange proportion between moral effects and their causes necessary in 
simple nature (analogically with the proportion between cause and 
consequence in physical pabulum), and how far is it the indication and 
the consequence of nature being depraved ? However this may be, the 
enormous fact of the inefficacy of truth shades with melancholy darkness 
to my view, all the hopes for myself and for others, of any grand im¬ 
provements in this world ! 

505. Curious process of kindling the passion,—fear, in one’s own 
breast, but the voluntary imagination of approaching ghosts, of the 
sound of murders, &c., &-c. I sometimes do this to escape from apathy. 

506. -’s memory is nothing but a row of hooks to hang up 

grudges on. 

507. One of the strongest characteristics of Genius is— the power of 
lighting its own fire. 

508. A man of ability, for the chief of his reading, should select such 
w’orks as he feels beyond his own power to have produced. What can 
other books do for him but waste his time and augment his vanity ? 

511. What a number of little captious feelings, mortifications, and 

even whims, are incident to a devoted affection. My friendship for- 

is attended with a painful watchfulness and susceptibility ; my heart 
suffers a feverish alternation of cold and warmth; physically and liter¬ 
ally sometimes a chill sensation pervades my bosom, and moves me at 

once to be irritated and weep. Qu. How far a continual state of 

feeling like this would be propitious to happiness and to virtue ? Yet 
how is a son of fancy and passion to content himself with that mere 
good-liking, which is exempt from all these pains, because it leaves the 
most Elysian powers of the heart to sleep unmolested to the end of 
time ? It seems tolerably evident, that such over-vitalized feelings are 
unfit for this world, and yet without them there can be none of that sub¬ 
limity and ecstasy of the affections, which we deem so congenial to the 
felicities of a superior world. 

512. I asserted the strength of Burke’s mind equal to that of John¬ 
son’s ; Johnson’s strength is more conspicuous because it is barer. A 

10 




130 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


very accomplished lady said, “ Johnson’s sense seems to me much clearer, 
much more entirely disclosed.” “ Madam, it is the difterence of two 
walks in a pleasure-ground, both equally good, and broad, and extended ; 
but the one lies before you plain and distinct, because it is not beset 
with the flowers and lilacs which fringe and embower the other. I am 
inclined to prefer the latter.” 

514. (Fragment of a letter, never sent, to a friend.) “In a lonely 
large apartment I write by a glimmering taper, too feeble to dispel the 
spectres which imagination descries, flitting or hovering in the twilight 
of the remote corners. The winds howl without, and at intervals I 
hear a distant bell, tolling amidst antiquity and graves. The place and 
the hour mLglit suit well for an appointed interview with a ghost, com¬ 
ing to reveal, though obscurely, “ the secrets of the world unknown.” 
I almost fancy I perceive his approach ; a certain trembling conscious¬ 
ness seems to breathe through the air; an indistinct sullen sound, like 
the tread of unseen footsteps, passes along the ground, and seems to 

come toward me ; I fearfully look up—and behold ! !-Thus abruptly 

last night I stopped, not without reason surely.” 

515. Some ladies, to whose conversation I had been listening, were 
to take aw’ay an epic poem to read. “ Why should you read an epic 
poem?” I said to myself; “you might as well save yourselves the 
trouble.” How' often I have been struck at observing, that no effect at 
all is produced, by the noblest wmrks of genius, on the habits of thought, 
sentiment, and talk, of the generality of readers; their mental tone be¬ 
comes no deeper, no mellower; they are not equal to a Addle, which 
improves by being repeatedly played upon. I should not expect one in 
twenty, of even educated readers, so much as to recollect one singularly 
sublime, and by far the noblest part, of the poem in question : so little 
emotion does anything awake, even in the moment of reading ; if it did, 
they would not forget it so soon. 

517. How is it possible the conversation of that pair can be interest¬ 
ing ? Surely the great principle of continued interest in such a con¬ 
nexion cannot be to talk always in the style of simple, direct personality, 
but to introduce personality into the subject; —to talk of topics so as to 
involve each other's feelings, without perpetually talking directly at each 
other. 

520. Most interesting idea, that of renovated being. I am not the 
person I was, the past is nothing to me ; the past I is not the present I; 
I have transited into another person ; I am my own pheenix. 

524. Indisposition of mankind to think; souls make the \vorld a vast 
dormitory. The heaven-appointed destiny under which they are placed, 
seems to protect them from reflection; there is an opium sky stretched 
over all the world, which continually rains soporifics. 

525. Long-maintained question in conversation, how far powerful im¬ 
agination does always, or necessarily, imply powerful judgment too. 
Instances, Burns, Bloomfield, &c. 


JOURNAL. 


131 


626. Interesting disquisition on the value of continuous passion, ha¬ 
bitual emotion, and whether this can be created, and how long a person 
so feeling could live. Buonaparte cannot live long. 

627. Stood in a solitary grove, just opposite to a large cascade, on 
which I looked with long and fixed attention. Most interesting to ob¬ 
serve the movements of my own mind, particularly as to the ideas which 
come from distant (unseen) objects and scenes. The images of several 
favorite persons, but particularly one, came around me with an aspect 
inconceivably delicious. Tried to ascertain how much of this charm 
was added to these images by the influence of the beautiful scene where 
they appeared to me. 

628. Stroke of description of -’s manners, when in the most 

advantageous form. He is neither vulgar nor genteel, nor any com¬ 
pound of these two kinds of vulgarity. He has the manners of no class, 
but something of a quite different order. His manners are a part of his 
soul, like the style of a writer of genius. His manners belong to the 
individual. He makes you think neither of clown nor gentleman,— 
but of MAN.*’ 

632. Infinite and incalculable caprices of feeling. A quarter of an 
hour since how romantic, how enchanted with the favorite idea, how an- 
ticipative of pleasure from an expected meeting! I have advanced within 
two hundred yards of the place : well, while I have been looking at some 
trees and a pool of water, the current of sentiment is changed, and I feel 
as if I could wish to slink away into deep and eternal solitude. 

533, (Right traces, meant to have been pursued much further, of a 

remarkable female.) She has the pride of sense, yet throws the 

onus of sensible social intercourse on you; not taking any sort of respon¬ 
sibility on herself as to the value, animation, or interesting style of con¬ 
versation ; she is silent. Yet if you did thus, would describe you to a 
third person as intolerably dull. 

Her judgment makes a difference as to the mental qualities of those 
she associates with, which her affections do not make. She does not 

become at all attached to what she respects.She has a much 

greater tendency to feel and express disgust than liking; contempt, than 
admiration. She rarely expresses, or seems to feel, admiration of any 
thing or character, but on a thousand occasions discovers her aversions. 

She has a fixed dislike to what may be called affectionatenesses in 
friendly intercourse; repels the tendency, in a person who is partial to 
her, toward any personalities of affection; devoutly worships Indiffer¬ 
ence, and is proud of the religion. 

If she speaks on a subject you have suggested, or even in reply to your 
observation, she directs her discourse to a third person, not to you; as 
if she would say, “ I choose to take sonae notice of the sulyect, but not 
the smallest notice of yoit.” 

634. Importance of having a system of exercising the affections, friend¬ 
ship, marriage, philanthropy, theopathy. If not in some of these ways 
exercised, affections become stunted, soured, self-directed.—Old maids. 





132 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


536. (Amazing caprices of feeling, vide No. 532.) .... Relapsed 
into the solitaire feeling; must be a monad. A trivial circumstance 
brought up the feeling that thus changed the current of the heart. That 
feeling was not of either altered opinions or diminished afiection, but a 
self-originating, sad, and retiring sentiment, which seemed to say, “ No 
heart will receive me, no heart needs me.” 

537. Have I so much originality as I suppose myself to have ? The 
question rises from the reflection that very few original plans of action or 
enterprise ever occurred to my thoughts. 

(Two or three memoranda, transcribed from a paper written at Chi¬ 
chester.) 

Important points ascertained :— 

(1.) In my present circumstances taken as they are, setting all the 
past aside, some one thing is absolutely the best thing I can design or do. 

(2.) My present sphere and course of action is most certainly not the 
best that can be. In proof of this assertion several conclusive reasons 
can be alleged. 

(3.) It strictly follows that to change this sphere and this course, is 
decisively a part of my duty. 

(4.) And inasmuch as life is valuable, and utility is its value, it is 
clear that the case is urgent, and that I am required to attempt this 
change with zeal and with speed. 

(5.) The greatest good is to be my sovereign principle and object of 
action. 

(6.) Incidental principle. To make the plans I adopt for the improve¬ 
ment of my own mind, contribute equally, if possible, to the improvement 
of others (by writing, letters,—and otherwise). 

(7.) Is not this world a proper scene for a benevolent and ardent 
mind ? There are bodies to heal, minds to enlighten and reform, social 
institutions to change, children to educate. In all this is there nothing 
that I can do 1!! 

(8.) One of these two things, viz., congenial society, and a sphere of 
urgency and action, seem absolutely necessary to save my energies from 
torpor or extinction. If I could gain both ! 

(9.) Oh, how I reprobate this indecision as to what character I will 
assume, and what designs I will attempt! 

(10.) I deem myself a man of capacity beyond the common; my plan 
of action ought therefore to include as little as possible of that which 
common capacity can perform as well as mine ; and as much as possible 
of what requires, and will educe, this superiority of ability which I at¬ 
tribute to myself. 

(11.) I want to extend, as it were, and augment my being and its in¬ 
terests ; there is one mean of doing this, which, &c. 

538. One limitation to the noble indifference to what people think and 
say of us. Every generous mind will regret those misapprehensions of 
its conduct, which occasion mortification to the person who misappre- 


JOURNAL. 


133 


hends—as that a person you respect should, through some mistake, be¬ 
lieve that you have ridiculed or injured him. 

648. (548—569 written during a walk of a few miles alone.) This 
glaring, steady sunshine gives an indistinct sameness to all objects, very 
like a Irequent state of my mind, distended in a fixed, general, vacant 
stare, incapable of individualizing. Hughes described it very correctl)'" 
once, after hearing me perform a mental exercise while my mind was in 
this state : “ All luminous, but no light.” It is possible to go on in this 
case, with a train of diction which may sound well enough, and even 
look fine, while it conveys no definite conceptions. 

547. Saw a most beautiful butterfly, which I was half inclined to 
chase. Qu. Which would be the stronger excitement to such pursuit, 
the curiosity raised by seeing such an object for the first time, or the 
feeling which, as now, is a relic of the interests and amusements of early 
youth ? 

549. The feeling which accompanies the recognition of an object that 
is not in itself interesting, but where the interest is in the circumstance 
of recognition. I have a feeling of this kind in seeing what I believe to 
be the same butterfly again at a considerable distance from where I saw 
it before. 

559. Mortified to see a crow fly across my road and away. Man 
here, proud man, is trudging at this slow and toilsome rate, but how 
much prouder and more mischievous I should be if I could fly. It was 
requisite for power of one kind to be checked by impotence of another. 
I cannot fly. 

560. Sheep crowding for shade round an old leafless stump. It can¬ 
not shade them now. Analogy: a man fallen from his prosperity and 
power cannot patronize now. None will seek him now but the simple. 

562. Blackthorn shows its blossoms before its leaves. Analogy : sen¬ 
sibilities developed before reason is sufficiently expanded to protect them. 

564. After looking a good while on the glaring side of the view, my 
eye does not nicely distinguish these modest beauties in the shade. 
Analogya man whose feelings and habits are formed in splendid and 
fashionable life, has no relish for the charms of retirement, or of secluded, 
affectionate society. 

569. How much one wishes it possible tc leave each painful feeling 
that accompanies one in the rock, or the tree, or the tomb that one passes ; 
but no: tenaciously faithful, it is found to accompany still! I am gone 
on, past fields, and woods, and towns, and streams, but there is a spectre 
here still following me ! 

588. “Well, but this qualification might be attained, if a man would 
exert sufficient application.” “ Ah, Madam, the field of possibility is so 
beset round with a hedge of thorny ^s.” 

589. -has one power beyond all you preachers I have yet heard,— 

a power of massy fragments of originality, like pieces of rock tumbling 
suddenly down, and dashing into a gulf of water below. 


134 


LIFE OB JOHN FOSTER. 


590. (Touch of description of a young woman in the lower ranks, 
not cultivated into a girl of sense, yet not so thoughtlessly vacant as the 
common vulgar.) “ She has notions.'^" 

592. The dictates of genius urging elevated principles are not admitted 
or understood by the generality. So I remember a man refusing a shil¬ 
ling quite new from the mint,^ every line and point of it distinct and 
brilliant, for “ it was an odd kind of shilling, not like other shillings,” it 
must therefore be a bad or suspicious one. 

596. Query, whether the generality of minds, the common order, 
could be cultivated into accuracy and discrimination of general thought. 
No; they might be made accurate in a particular department, depending 
on facts,—accurate mechanics, tradesmen, grammarians, &c.,—but not 
as thinkers on the wide general field of truth and sentiment. “ This is 
very unfortunate.” “ No, madam, all is appointed by the Deity, and if 
more geniuses had been needful, they would have been forthcoming. 

597. You plead that dancing, &.C., are things of pleasant sensation. 
Yes, you are right; it does not reach sentiment. The line that divides 
the regions of sensation and sentiment is a very important one :—is not 
dignity all on the other side of this line, i. e., the region of sentiment. 

600. Confront improper conduct, not by retaliation, but example. 

602. (Said of a lady who infamously spoilt her son,—a most perverse 
child.) “ She will have her reward; she cultivates a night-shade, and 
is destined to eat its poisoned berries.” 

605. (Remark on the character of Green.) There is such a predomi¬ 
nant habit of deep feeling in his mind, that the smallest touch, a single 
sentence, will instantly bring his mind and his very voice into that tone. 
Comparing him to a musical stringed instrument I should say, that he 
never needed tuning; the strings are perfectly ready at any moment; 
you have only to touch them and they will sound harmoniously the 
genuine music of sentiment. 

606. A character should retain always the upright vigor of manli¬ 
ness ; not let itself be bent and fixed in any specific form. It should be 
like an upright elastic tree, which bends, accommodating a little to each 
wind on every side, but never loses its spring and self-dependent vigor. 

608. A lady said she remembered a remarkable and romantic hill 
much more distinctly now at the distance of a considerable number of 
years, from the impression made by a thunder storm which happened 
when she was on the summit of this hill. I observed how advantageous 
it is to connect, if we could, some striking association with every idea 
or scene we wish to remember with permanent interest. This is like 
framing and glazing the mental picture, and will preserve it an indefinite 
length of time. 

609. Astonishing fact, that all that mankind acknowledge the greatest, 
they care about the least i—as first, on the summit of all greatness, the 
Deity. ’Tis acknowledged he reigns over all, is present always here, 
>3revails in each atom and each star, observes us as an awful Judge^ 


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claims infinite regard, is supremely good—what then? why, think 
nothing at all about him ! 

There is Eternity; you have lived perhaps thirty years; you are by 
no means entitled to expect so much more life; you at the utmost will 
very soon, very soon die ! What follows ? Eternity ! a boundless re¬ 
gion ; inextinguishable life; myriads of mighty and strange spirits; 
vision of God ; glories, horrors. Well—what then ? Why, think 
nothing at all about it! 

There is the great affair—moral and religious improvement. What 
is the true business of life ? To grow wiser, more pious, more benevo¬ 
lent, more ardent, more elevated in every noble purpose and action, to 
resemble the Divinity ! It is acknowledged ; who denies or doubts it ? 
What then ? Why, care nothing at all about it! Sacrifice to trifles 
the energies of the heart, and the short and fleeting time allotted for 
divine attainments! Such is the actual course of the world. What a 
thing is mankind ! 

610. (Feature of the character of one of my friends.) “Vigilant 
without suspicion, and discriminating v/ithout fastidiousness.” 

611. (Character of one of my acquaintance, whom a friend was 
describing as melancholy.) “ No ; her feelings are rather fretted than 
melancholy.” 

612. Astonishing number of analogies with 7noral truth, strike one’s 
imagination in wandering and musing through the scenes of nature. 
Or, is analogy a really existing fact, or merely an illusive creation of the 
mind within itself ? Suggested in a moonlight walk, by observing a 
great rock reflected downward as far as its height upward, in a still 
piece of water at its foot, and by comparing this deception to that delu'i 
sive magic of imagination which magnifies into double its proper dimen¬ 
sions of importance an object which is interesting. 

613. Sat a little while with a fascinating woman, in a room which 
looked out on a beautiful rural and vernal scene, while the rays of the 
setting sun shone in with a mellow softness that cannot be described, 
after spreading a very peculiar light over the grass, and being partially 
intercepted by some blooming orchard trees, so as to throw on the walls 
of this room a most magical })icture; every moment moving and chang¬ 
ing, and finally melting away. I compared this room in this state, con¬ 
trasted with an ordinary room in an ordinary state, to the interior of a 
common mind, contrasted with the interior of a mind of genius. Con¬ 
versation on the feelings and value of genius. Shall never forget this 
hour. 

614. In the moment of uncontrolled fancy and feeling, one attributes 
perceptions like one’s own to even inanimate objects for instance, that 
solitary tree appears to me as if regretting its desolate, individual state. 

615. One wonders in how many respects a real resemblance exists 
through the creation. One may doubt whether, if there be embodied 
inhabttants in the planets of other suns, or even in the other planets of 


136 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


our own system, they have forms anything like ours. They may be 
square, orbicular, or of any other form. One analogy (physical ana- 
logy), however, strikes me as prevailing through every part of the uni¬ 
verse that sight or science can reach, and that \s,—fire. The fixed stars 
are the remotest material existences we know of, and they certainly 
must be fire, like that which exists in a nearer part of the creation. 
This striking circumstance of similarity warrants the supposition of 
many more, in the physical phenomena of the distant parts of the 
universe—and may not this physical conformity warrant the supposition 
of a similarity in the moral phenomena of the different regions of the 
creation ? 

616. Some people’s sensibility is a mere bundle of aversions, and you 
hear them display and parade it, not in recounting the things they are 
attached to, but in telling you how many things and persons they “ can¬ 
not bear.” 

618. Mrs. -’s passions are like a little whirlwind—round and 

round ; moving, active, but still here; do not carry her forward, away, 
into superior attainment. 

619. Amusing idea, of playing a concert of j)eople, that is, drawing 
forth the various passions, prejudices, &.C., of a small company of per¬ 
sons, and mixing them, soothing them, exciting them, and, in short, 
entirely playing all their characters at the will, and by the unnoticed 
influence of the player. 

620. A human being like Edwin (the Minstrel) would be the proper 
touchstone to bring into the routine of fashionable life, talk, amusements, 
&-C.: what his feeling would nauseate is nauseous. 

621. Conversational disquisition on novels. “ I have often maintained 
that fiction may be much more instructive than real history. I think so 
still; but viewing the vast rout of novels as they are, I do think they do 
incalculable mischief. I wish we could collect them all together, and 
make one vast fire of them; I should exult to see the smoke of them 
ascend like that of Sodom and Gomorrah : the judgment would be as 
just.” 

622. One important rule belongs to the composition of a fiction, which I 
suppose the writers of fiction seldom think of, viz., never to fabricate or in¬ 
troduce a character to whom greater talents or wisdom is attributed than 
the author himself possesses; if he does, how shall this character be sus¬ 
tained ? By what means should my own fictitious personage think or 
talk better than myself! The author may indeed describe his hero, and 
say that his Edward, or his Henry, or his Francis, is distinguished by 
genius, acuteness, profundity and comprehension of intellect, originality 
and pathos of sentiment, magical fancy, and everything else; this is all 
very soon done. But if this Henry, or Edward, or Clement, or what¬ 
ever else it is, is to talk befoi-e us, then, unless the author AmseZ/has all 
these high qualities of mind, he cannot, like a ventriloquist, make them 
speak in the person of his hero. There will thus be a miserable discre- 



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pancy between what his hero was at his introduction described to be, and 
what he proves himself to be when he opens his mouth. We may easily 
imagine, then, how qualified the greatest number of novel writers are for 
devising thought, speech, and action for heroes, sages, philosophers,"ge¬ 
niuses, wits, &.C. ! ! ! Yet this is what they all can do! ! ! 

623. (Mention of having read a transcendent dramatic work.) “ I 
never was so fiercely carried off by Pegasus before; the fellow neighed 
as he ascended.” 

625. Some one said that women remarked characters more discrimi- 
natively than men. I said, “ They remark manners far more than cha¬ 
racters. The mental force which might be compressed and pointed into 
a javelin, to pierce quite through a character, they splinter into little tiny 
darts to stick all over the features, complexion, attitude, drapery, &c. 
How often I have entered a room with the embarrassment of feeling that 
all my motions, gestures, postures, dress, &c., &c., &c., were critically 
appreciated, and self-complacently condemned ; but at the same time 
with the bold consciousness that the inquisiticm could reach no further. 
I have said with myself, “ My character, that is the man, laughs at you 
behind this veil; I may be the devil for what you can tell; and you 
would not perceive neither if I were an angel of light.” 

626. (Said of an exquisitely soft and pensive evening), “ It is as if 
the soul of Eloisa pervaded all the air.” 

627. How hopeless is the attempt to anticipate the final, fixed state of 
either one’s opinions or sentiments ! How they for ever fluctuate to the 
various influence of changing scenes, social affections, and advancing 
life. If I should live to the age of sixty, the radical character of my 
mind and my heart will probably be the same as now, but the possible 
modifications are infinite! One thing is certain; that cheerfulness is 
not among those possibilities, for that would be a radical change. And 
how impossible is it to give one’s own perceptions to those who are com¬ 
ing after one in the course of life ! With what a mixture of pity, envy, 
occasional pride, but above all, dissociation, one regards their unadept 
fancies, hopes, and notions ! 

If one deem one’s self a superior mind, one knows, of course, that in 
no length of time many will ever come to the point where I now stand. 
Their walk is along the common road ; mine has been through the untrod¬ 
den vales and hills. I heard several aged persons expressing their high 
admiration of a book which I admired when I was ffteen, but when I 
was twenty admired no more. 

630. Shakspeare had perceptions of every kind ; he could think 
every way. His mind might be compared to that monster the prophet 
saw in his vision, which had eyes all over. 

631. I heard lately an educated lady say she did not admire Shak¬ 
speare at all. / admired her. It has often struck me as curious to 
observe the entire, unhesitating self-complacency with which characters 
assume to admire and detest, in opposition to the concurrent opinions of 


138 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


all the most enlightened and thinking minds.With all this self- 

satisfied feeling, the most ignorar.t, or the most illiberal, hearers of ser¬ 
mons pronounce on the talents, &c., of the preachers. 

632. I remember buying some trifle of, I think, a fruit-woman, in Ire¬ 
land, who held me back the piece of money, and requested me, as it was 
the first money she had taken that day, to “ spit on it for luck.” I here 
regret having made no memoranda of the vast number of curious anec¬ 
dotes, incidents, and odd glimpses of human nature which one has met 
with in the course of years, and forgotten. , 

635. Superlative value in connexions of friendship or love, of mutual 
discrimination. I cannot love a person who does not recognize my m- 
dhidual character. It is most gratifying, even at the expense of every 
fault being clearly perceived, to see that in my friend’s mind there is a 
standard, or scale of degrees, and that he exactly perceives which degree 
on this scale I reach to. What nonsense is sometimes inculcated on 
married persons and on children in regard to their parents, about being 
blind to their faults, at the very time, forsooth, they, are to cultivate their 
reason to the utmost accuracy, and to apply it fully in all other instances ! 
as if, too, this duty of blindness depended on the w’ill! 

All strenuous moral speculations, all high ideas of perfection, must be 
pursued at the expense of all human characters around us. The defects 
of our friends will strike us, whether we will or not, while we study the 
sublime theory, and strike us the more, the more distinctly we under¬ 
stand the theory and them. They will oiiGn force their aid on us in the 
form of contrast. This cannot be helped ; the truth and the consequent 
feelings must take their course. 

636. Quantity of existence may perhaps be a proper phrase for that, 
the less or more of which causes the less or more of our interest in the 
individuals around us. The person who gives us most the idea of am¬ 
ple being, interests us the most. Something certainly depends on the 
mortification of this being, and something on its comprising each of the 
parts requisite to completeness; but still perhaps the most depends on its 
quantity. This is the principle of my attachment to Y. I do not ex¬ 
actly like the modification, and there seems a defect of one article or two 
to entireness; but I am gratified by the ample measure. Z. has both the 
ample quantity of being, and the charming modification, and the entire 
number of parts ; Z. is therefore the most interesting individual I know. 

637. (Expression in an evening prayer.) “ May we consider each 
night as the tomb of the departed day, and, seriously leaning over it, read 
the inscription written by conscience, of its character and exit.” 

638. (Said on being requested to translate Buchanan’s incomparable 
Latin Ode to May.) “ It would be like the attempt to paint a sun-setting 
cloud-scene.” 

639. A young lady, whose perceptions were often natural and correct 
without her being able to appreciate them, said to a friend of mine, “ I 
like to walk in the country with you because you are pleased with re* 



JOURNAL. 


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marking objects and talking of them. The companions I have been 
accustomed to would say, when I wished to do this, • Caroline, take less 
notice of the fields and more of the company I! /’ This young woman, 
amidst much puerility, would frequently express, unconscious of their 
value, feelings so natural and just as to be quite interesting, and some¬ 
times even striking to a philosopher. I compared her to the African, 
James Albert, who, when come to England and in possession of money, 
would give to a beggar as it might happen, a penny or a half-guinea, 
unapprised of the respective value of each. 

640. Among married persons of the common size and texture of 
minds, the grievances they occasion one another are rather feelings of 
irritated temper than of hurt sentiment; an important distinction. Of 
the latter perhaps they were, never capable, or perhaps have long since 
worn out the capability. Their pain, therefore, is far less deep and 
acute than a sentimental observer would suppose, or would in the same 
circumstances, with their own feelings, suffer. 

641. Some people’s religion is for want of sense; if they had this, 
they would have no religion, for their religion is no more than prejudice 
—superstition. 

642. A man or woman with a stupid or perverse partner, but still 
hoping to see this partner become all that is desired, is like a man with 
a wooden leg wishing it might become a vital one, and sometimes for a 
moment fancying this almost possible. 

642. * The presence of a third person gives a more balanced feeling 
with respect to an individual that interests one too much. 

643. Common-place truth is of no use, as it makes no impression; it 
is no more instruction than ivind is music. The truth must take a par¬ 
ticular hearing, as the wind must pass through tubes, to be anything 
worth. 

644. Many years are now gone since the conduct and the responsi¬ 
bility of my own education devolved entirely on myself. It is not ne¬ 
cessary to review these years in order to estimate the manner in which 
this momentous charge has been executed. The present state of my 
mind and character supplies a mortifying excess of proof, that the inter¬ 
esting work has been conducted ill. 

645. P. made some most interesting observations on the moral effect 
of the study of natural philosophy, including astronomy. He denied 
as a general fact, the tendency of even this last grand science to expand, 
sublime, or moralize the mind. He had talked with the famous Dr. 
Herschel. It was of course to suppose, d priori, that Herschel’s stu¬ 
dies would alternately intoxicate him with reverie, almost to delirium, 
and carry him irresistibly away towards the throne of the divine Ma¬ 
jesty. P. questioned him on the subject. Herschel told him that these 
eftects took place in his mind in but a very small degree; much less, 
probably, than in the mind of a poet without any science at all. Neither 
a habit of pious feeling, nor any peculiar and transcendent emotions of 
piety, were at all the necessary consequence. 


140 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


646. On observation. The capabilities of any sphere of observation 
are in proportion to the force and number of the observer’s faculties, 
studies, interests. In one given extent of space, or in one walk, one per¬ 
son will be struck by five objects, another by ten, another by a hundred, 
some by none at all. 

Power of mind and refinement of feeling being supposed equal, the 
number of a person’s interests and classes of knowledge will have a 
great effect to extend or confine his sphere of observation. Was struck 
lately in remarking Lunell’s superiority over me in this respect. In a 
given scene or walk, I should make original observations belonging to 
the general laws of taste, to fancy, sentiment, moral reflection, religion; 
so would he, with great success; but, in addilion, he would make ob¬ 
servations in reference to the arts, to geographical comparison, to his¬ 
torical comparison, to commercial interest, to the artificial laws of ele¬ 
gance, to the existing institutions of society. Every new class of know¬ 
ledge, then, and every new subject of interest, becomes to an observer a 
new sense, to notice innumerable facts and ideas, and consequently re¬ 
ceive endless pleasurable and instructive hints, to which he had been 
else as insensible as a man asleep. This is like employing at once all 
the various modes of catching birds, instead of one only. It is another 
question, whether the mind’s observing powers will act less advantage¬ 
ously in any one given direction from being diverted into so many 
directions. 

647. Have just seen the moon rise, and wish the image to be eternal. 
I never beheld her in so much character, nor with so much sentiment, 
all.these thirty years that I have lived. Emerging from a dark mountain 
of clouds, she appeared in a dim sky, which gave a sombre tinge to her 
most majestic aspect. It seemed an aspect of solemn, retiring severity, 
which had long forgotten to smile ; the aspect of a being which had no 
sympathies with this world,—of a being totally regardless of notice, and 
having long since, with a gloomy dignity, resigned the hope of doing any 
good, yet proceeding with composed, unchangeable self-determination to 
fulfil her destiny, and even now looking over the world at its accomplish¬ 
ment. (Happy part of the figure.) Felt it difficult to divest the moon 
of that personality and consciousness which my imagination had re¬ 
cognized from the first moment. With an effort, alternated the ideas of 
her being a mere lucid body, and of her being a conscious power, and felt 
the latter infinitely more interesting, and even more as if it were natural 
and real. Do not know how I found in the still shades, that dimmed in 
solemnness the lower part of her orb, the suggestion of immortality, and 
the wish to be a “ disembodied power.” Question to the silent spirits of 
the night, “ What is your manner of feeling as you contemplate all these 
scenes ? Are yours all ideas of absolute science, or do they swim in 
visionary fancy ?” The apprehension of soon losing my power of seeing 
a world so superabundant of sentiment and soul, is very mournful.* 

* May, 1801. A worthy friend gave me this book with a request that I 


JOURNAL. 


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648. Made in conversation, but cannot recollect sufficiently to write, 
a vivid and happy display of what may bo called jiliysiopathy, a faculty 
of pervading all Nature witli one’s own being, so as to have a j)erception, 
a life, and an agency in all things. A person of such a mind stands and 
gazes at a tree, for instance, till the object becomes all wonderful, and is 
transfigured into something visionary and ideal. He is amazed what a 
tree is, how it could, from a little stem which a worm might crop, rise 
up into that majestic size, and how it could ramify into such multitudi¬ 
nous extent of bouglis, twigs, and leaves. Fancy climbs up from its 
root like ivy, and twines round and round it, and extends to its remotest 
shoots and trembling foliage. But this is not all; the tree soon becomes 
to your imagination a conscious being, and looks at you, and communes 
with you ; ideas cluster on each branch, meanings emanate from every 
twig. Its tallness and size look conscious majesty ; roaring in the wind 
its movements express tremendous emotion. In sunshine or soft showers 
it carries a gay, a tender, or a pensive character; it frowns in winter on 
a gloomy day. If you observe a man of this order, though his body be a 
small thing, invested completely with a little cloth, he expands his being 
in a grand circle all around him. He feels as if he gi*ew in the grass, 
and flowers, and groves ; as if he stood on yonder distant mountain-top, 
conversing with clouds, or sublimely sporting among their imaged 
precipices, caverns, and ruins. He flows in that river, chafes in its 
cascades, smiles in the aqueous flowers, frisks in the fishes. He is 
sympathetic with every bird, and seems to feel the sentiment that prompts 
the song of each. (This, in one sense, is “ inheriting all ^hings.”) 

650. Lord Chatham in his speeches did not reason; he struck, as -by 
intuition, directly on thg results of reasoning; as a cannon-shot strikes 
the mark without your seeing its course through the air as it moves 
towards its object. 

651. Readers in general who have an object beyond amusement, yet 
are not apprised of the most important use of reading, the acquisition of 
power. Their knowledge is not power; and, too, the memory retains but 
the small part of the knowledge of which a book should be full; the grand 
object, then, should be to improve the strength and tone of the mind by a 
thinking, analysing, discriminating, manner of reading. 

652. I have observed, that most ladies who have had what is considered 

would fill it with my own thoughts, in any form, of essays, sermons, frag¬ 
ments, or sentences, and then return it to him.—I am sensible of the 
compliment; but cannot be so liberal of the very scanty productions of my 
mind as to comply with the request. I therefore retain the book as my 
own, and entirely for my own use. The ominous symptoms in my eyes do 
not leave me the hope of preserving the power of sight long enough to 
write it full. I turn from a view of the vernal beauties that are spreading 
all around me, with sad emotion, to think that probably in a little while, 
all the creation will be to me shrouded in a night which nothing will 
irradiate but the sun of the other world.” A^ote by Mr. Foster in a MS. 
volume. 


142 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


as an education, have no idea of an education progressive through life. 
Having attained a certain measure of accomplishment, knowledge, man¬ 
ners, &-C., they consider themselves as made up, and so take their station ; 
they are pictures which, being quite finished, are now put in a frame—a 
gilded one, if possible—and hung up in permanence of beauty ! in per¬ 
manence, that is to say, till Old Time, with his rude and dirty fingers, 
soil the charming colors. 

653. Fine sensibilities are like woodbines, delightful luxuries of beauty 
to twine round a solid, upright, stem of understanding; but very poor 
things, if, unsustained by strength, they are left to creep along the 
ground. 

658. How should a mind, capable of any intellectual or moral ambition, 
feel at the thought of transcendent examples of talent and achievement ? 
Suggested on awalving at a late hour, and instantly recollecting—“ Now 
Buonaparte has probably been four hours employed this morning in 
thinking of the arrangements of the greatest empire on earth, and I-.” 

672. Represented strongly to a young lady the importance of a taste 
for the sublime, as a most powerful ally to all moral, all religious, all 
dignified plans of happiness. 

685. I have once more been throwing an eager gaze over the heaven 
of stars, with the alternate feelings of shrinking into an atom and expand¬ 
ing into an angel—what I but am now ! what I may be hereafter! I am 
amazed that so transcendently awful a spectacle should seize attention so 
seldom, and affect the habit of thought so little. What is the most 
magnificent page of a heroic poem, compared with such an expanse of 
glorious images ? It seems the grand portico into that infinity in which 
the incomprehensible Being resides. Oh, that this soul should have 
within itself so little of that amplitude and that divine splendoi which 
deify the scene that for ever environs it! Mortifying, that my scope of 
existence is so little, with the feeling as if it might be so vast. The 
hemisphere of thought surely ought to have some analogy with the 
hemisphere of vision. Most mortifying, that this wondrous, boundless 
universe should be so little mine, either by knowledge, or by assimilating 
influence! But this vision gives a delightful omen of what the never- 
dying mind may at length behold—may at last become ! Oh, may 1 never 
again disobey or forget a Power whose existence pervades all yonder 
stars, and is their grandeur. It is indeed possible to engage his attention, 
and enjoy his friendship for ever! In this comparison, what becomes of 
the importance of our human friendships ? Yet still I am man, and the 
social, tender sentiment at this very moment says in my heart, there are 
one or two dear persons whom I cannot but wish to have for my affec¬ 
tionate, impassioned associates in exploring those divine regions. 

687. How all little systematic forms of theology vanish from the soul 
in tlie sublime endeavor to recognize, amid his own amazing works, the 
Deity of the universe! i. e. to form such an idea of him, as shall be felt 
to bo worthy to represent the Creator and preserving Governor of such a 
scene. 



JOURNAL. 


143 


689. (Hearing an excellent sermon)—most monstrous truth—that 
this sermon, composed of perhaps two hundred just thoughts, will, by the 
evening hour, be forgotten by all the hearers except—how many? Yet 
every just thought of religion requires its counterpart in feeling and action, 
or does it nut ? 

690. Here now the inestimable gifts of religion are carried round to 
400 people (the congregation)—if it could be made visible, how many 
take them, and what part of them, and how much, and how many let 
them pass by, and why ? 

691. Surely the human mind, quenched as it is in a body, with all 
that body’s sensations, is not a thing to be worked upon by the presenta¬ 
tion of truth! How little, in general, it thinks or cares about the whole 
displayed firmament of truth, wdth all its constellations. No ! the case 
of mankind is desperate, unless a continual miracle interpose. 

693. Many things may descend from the sky of truth without deeply 
striking and interesting men; as from the sky of clouds, rain, snow, &.C., 
may descend without exciting ardent attention; it must be large hail¬ 
stones, the sound of thunder, torrent-rain, and the lightning-flash ; analo¬ 
gous to these must be the ideas and propositions which strike men’s 
minds. 

702. A person who can be habitually in the company of a communi¬ 
cative man of original genius for a considerable time, without being 
greatly modified, is either a very great, or a contemptibly little, being ; 
he has either the vigorous firmness of the oak, or the heavy firmness of a 
stone. 

704. I have the highest opinion of the value of a ruling passion; but 
if this passion monopolizes all the man, it requires that the object be a 
very comprehensive or a very dignified one, to save him from being 
ridiculous. The devoted antiquary, for instance, who is passionately in 
love with an old coin, an old button, or an old nail, is ridiculous. The 
man who is nothing but a musician, and recognizes nothing in the whole 
creation but crotchets and quavers, is ridiculous. So is the nothing but 
verbal critic, to whom the adjustment of a few insignificant particles in 
some ancient author, appears a more important study than the grandest 
arrangements of politics or morals. Even the total devotee to the grand 
science Astronomy, incurs the same misfortune. Religion and morals 
have a noble pre-eminence here; no man can become ridiculous by his 
passionate devotion to them; even a specific direction of this passion will 
make a man sublime, witness Howard; specific I say, and correctly, 
though, at the same time, any large plan of benevolence must be com¬ 
prehensive, so to speak, of a large quantity of morals. 

705. Delightful conversational reverie on the idea of an angel living, 
walking, conversing with one for a month. Month of ecstatic sentiment! 
What profound and incurable regrets for his going away! 

707. All reasoning is retrospect; it consists in the application of facts 
and principles previously known. This will show the very great im¬ 
portance of knowledge, especially that kind which is called Experience. 


144 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


708. The question that leads most directly to the true estimate of a 
man’s talents (I asked myself this question after having been several 
times in Mr. Hall’s company) is this: How much of new would prove to 
be gained to the region of truth, by the assemblage of all that his mind 
has contributed ? The highest order of talent is certainly the power of 
revelation—the power of imparting new propositions of important truth: 
inspiration, therefore, while it continued in a given mind, might be called 
the paramount talent. The second order of talent is, perhaps, the power 
of development—the power of disclosing the reasons and the proofs of 
principles, and the causes of facts. The third order of talents is, perhaps, 
the power of application—the power of adapting truth to effect. 

709. A very respectable widow, remarking on matrimonial quarrels, 
said that the first quarrel that goes the length of any harsh or contemptu¬ 
ous language, is an unfortunate epoch in married life, for that the delicate 
respectfulness being thus once broken down, the same kind of language 
much more easily comes afterwards; there is a feeling of having less to 
love than before. 

710. When expressing a conjecture that, as in the previous course of 
love, so after marriage, it may be that reconciliations after disagreements 
are accompanied by a peculiar fascinating tenderness,—I was told by a 
very sensible experimentalist that the possibility of this feeling continues 
but for a while, and that it will be extremely perceptible when the period 
is come, that no such felicitous charm will compensate for domestic mis¬ 
understandings. /, however, cannot but think that when this period is 
come, the sentimental enthusiasm is greatly subsided,—that its most 
enchanting interest is, indeed, quite gone off. 

712. An observant man, in all his intercourse with society and the 
world, carries a pencil constantly in his hand, and, imperceived, marks 
on every person and thing the figure expressive of its value, and there¬ 
fore instantly on meeting that person or thing again, knows what kind 
and degree of attention to give it. This is to make something of 
experience. 

715. It seems a thing to be regretted that so much of our Lord’s con¬ 
versation, consisting of momentous and infallible truth, should have been 
irretrievably lost. How much larger, and, if one may say so, how much 
more valuable, the New Testament would have been if all the instruc¬ 
tions he uttered had been recorded. By what principle of preference 
were the conversations which the Evangelists record, preser\'ed, rather 
than the others which are lost ? That he did many things that are not 
recorded is distinctly said by John, last chapter, last verse. 

719. Process of the physical creation. Darkness brooding, dim 
dreary light, herbs, sun, &c. Analogy. Consider the whole course of 
lime as the world’s moral creation. At what period and stage in the 
analogy has it now arrived ?—not more than the first day. 

721. Effect of the application of astronomical science, or rather of th^ 
immense ideas derived from astronomy, to modify theological notions from 
the state in which divines exhibit them. (v. (J87.) 


JOURNAL. 


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725. A picture of a precipice reflected in a deep pit, transcendently 
beautiful! A small cascade from the top falling and fretting on point 
after point of the rocky precipice. Most beautiful aquatic green, in many 
recesses of the precipice nourished by this water. I wandered and gazed 
here five years since. Dismal sombre look of the farthest point of the 
shelving rock, visible down through the dark water of the pit. Pretty 
innocent dimples on the surface of this pit, caused by a gentle breath of 
air. Analogy—Deep villain smiles. 

720. Most magical succession, for several miles, of reflections on the 
glassy surface of a canal, of the adjacent hill and wood scenery. One 
stripe of reflection of a distant scene, and a grand one, in a small narrow 
piece of water in a field, so that this foreign piece seemed joined into the 
verdant field. Analogy—transient view of heaven in this common life. 

728. Saw a halcijon; felt more respect for it on account of its classical 
celebrity, than a common bird. But how arbitrary are these distinctions; 
the bird has no dignified consciousness of superiority, and, except for its 
beauty, possesses none. 

729. Recollective remark on my fastidiousness, in respect of person¬ 
alities of kindness. I know scarcely any man by whose taking my arm 
in walking along I should be cordially gratified, and not very many women. 

730. Observed with interest the tumults occasioned in a canal, by the 
sluice of the lock being opened ; but recollected what vast commotion 
must be caused by the rebound of Niagara, and instantly turned away. 

731. Hope to derive considerable influence toward simplicity and 
refinement from voy pathetic conversations with so many charming natural 
scenes. 

732. Every day struck with the wretched and barbarous appearance, 
and the coarse manners of the populace. (This was, I believe, in Lan¬ 
cashire.) How most astonishing that the Creator should have placed so 
many millions of the creatures he has endowed with noble faculties (or 
the seeds of them), in situations where these faculties and the whole 
being are inevitably debased! Wonder again what really could be done 
by political institution managed by a Buonaparte in morals. I cannot, 
will not, believe that all must necessarily he thus. 

734. (Conclusion of a moral, monitory letter to a young acquaint¬ 
ance.) “ I scarcely need to remark on the value of youth, with all its 
living energy ; but I may express my regret at seeing all around me, a 
possession so sweet and fair, so miserably poisoned and stained. I have 
only a question or two for you. Why do you think it happy to he 
young ? Why ? When you shall be advanced toward the conclusion 
of life, why will you think it happy to have been young ? Is there the 
least possibility or danger that then you may not think so at all ? Why 
do you look with pleasure on the scene of coming life ? Does the plea¬ 
sure spring from a sentiment less noble than the hope of securing as 
you go on, those inestimable attainments which will not decay with 
declining life, and may consequently set age, and time, and dissolution 
11 


146 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


at defiance ? You gladly now see life before you, but there is a moment 
which you are destined to meet when you will have passed across it, 
and will find yourself at the farther edge. Are you perfectly certain, 
that at that moment you will be in possession of something that will 
enable you not to care that life is gone ? If you should not, what then ? 

(I transcribe the conclusion, because the entire copy is not worth 
preserving. It was written to a young woman, the daughter of one of 
the members of a church to which I preached, whose unfortunate cir¬ 
cumstances engaged a measure of my benevolence. I proposed writing 
several more letters adapted to insinuate instruction. No. 500 was the 
beginning of the second, which I never finished nor sent; I found the 
person was so worthless, that any continued attention would involve my 
character.) 

735. Important reflection in opposition to the regret of not having seen 
more of the world in each of its departments. “ But I have seen far 

more of the world, i. e., of event, character, and natural scenes, than I 

have turned into knoivlcdge, —and this alone could be the value of seeing 
still more.” 

737. “Looking at these objects is reading !” said I to myself, while 
beholding sheep, meads, &c. “^Is not this more than reading descrip¬ 
tions of these things ?” I had been regretting how little I had read 
respecting some things that can be seen. 

739. (Written in a very pensive mood, and when disposed to complain 
(unjustly) of the manners of an inestimable and interesting friend.) 

-Feel this insuperable individuality. Something seems to say^ 

“ Come, come away ; I am but a gloomy ghost among the living and the 
happy. There is no need of me; I shall never be loved as I wish to be 

loved, and as I could love. I will converse with my friends in solitude; 

then they seem to be within my soul; when I am with them they seem 
to be without it. They do not need the new felicities I could impart; it 
is not generous to tax their sympathies with my sorrows; and these 
sorrows have an aspect on myself which no other person can see. I 
can never become deeply important to any one ; and the unsuccessful 
effort to become so costs too much, in the painful sentiment which the 
affections feel when they return mortified from the fervent attempt to 
give themselves to some heart which would welcome them with a pa¬ 
thetic warmth.” 

740. (The following, too, of the same date, chiefly respects the same 
person.) 

Omnis in hoc,^^ is the description of the only character that I can 
give myself to entirely. Green was very much this; a mind not only 
of deep tone, but always so. “ Omnis in hoc ;” yes, I want in my asso¬ 
ciate something like continuous emotion. I hate a neutral reposing state 
of the passions, that kind of tranquillity which is merely the absence of 
all pregnant sentiment. I pass some time with a friend in the high ex¬ 
citement of interesting, perhaps impassioned conversation; next day | 


JOURNAL. 


147 


revisit this friend for the sequel of this energetic season, myself glowing 
with the same feelings still. Well, with my friend the enthusiasm is all 
gone by; his feelings are tame and easy; yesterday he was grave, 
ardent, every particle imbued with sentiment; we became interested to 
the pitch of intensity; I thought, “ Let this become our liahit and we 
shall become sublime.” To-day he is in an easy, careless mood; the 
heroic episode is past and over; he is perhaps sprightly and flippant; 
his voice has recovered from its tone of soul; and he is perhaps compla¬ 
cently busy about some mere trifles. My heart shuts itself up and feels 
a painful chill; I am glad to be gone to indulge alone my musings of 
regret and insulation. Women have more of this discontinuity than 
men. No one can be more than-interested to-day, and degagee to¬ 

morrow. 

A man of melancholy feelings peculiarly feels this revulsion, with 
those who are pensive only as an occasional sentiment; not like him¬ 
self, as a hahit. His associates should all be of his own character. He 
emphatically wants unity of character in his friend. 

I have more of habitual character than you-. A person would 

better know where in the mental world to find me. The ascendant in¬ 
terest of yesterday is the ascendant interest of to-day too. It is unfor¬ 
tunate in character for its nobler aspects to be transient. You have not 
sufficiently a grand commanding principle of seriousness to pervade and 
harmonize the total of your habits. A love of the sublime is with you a 
sentiment; with me it is a passion. In the gaiety of innocence you 
sport at liberty, forgetful tliat a moral and immortal being should have 
all its faculties and feelings concentrated toward an important purpose. 
No one has given all the passion due to great objects till trivial ones 
have ceased to amuse him into even a temporary oblivion of them. 
Yes, after attention to the most solemn speculations, you can escape so 
completely from their fascination, so soon brighten off their interesting 
sombre, and enter into a mirthful party, and laugh with the utmost glee 
and gaieti du cceur. Not so I; not so Edwin, if he were a person of 
real life; not so Howard ; not so any one who is seized irrecoverably 
with a spirit of ardor till death. Yes, my friend, you let yourself be 
what may happen, rather than deliberately determine to be what you 
sliould, and all you can. 

741. Will endeavor not to forget the impressive lessons on education, 

both as to the importance and the mode of it, supplied by Mr.-’s 

family, the best school for instruction on this subject I ever saw. In 
that family, the whole system and all the parts of it are so correctly and 
transcendently had, that it is only necessary to adopt a directly opposite 
plan in every point to be exactly right. 

I suppose it'never occurs to parents that to throw vilely educated 
young people on the world is, independently of the injury to the young 
people themselves, a positive crime, and of very great magnitude; as 
great for instance, as burning their neighbor’s house, or poisoning the 




148 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


water in his well. In pointing out to them what is wrong, even if thej; 
acknowledge the justness of the statement, one cannot make them feel a 
sense of guilt, as in other proved charges. That they love their children 
extenuates to their consciences every parental folly that may at last 
produce in the children every desperate vice. 

742. At an association lately, observed how little human beings as 
individuals interest one another, beyond the very narrow limits of rela¬ 
tionship, love, or uncommonly devoted friendship. There were several 
persons with whom I had been acquainted complacently, but without 
any particular attachment several years before ; and had not seen them 
for a considerable interval. We met, shook hands, “ How do you do ?” 
“ I am glad to see you.” “ What have you been doing all this while ?” 
with a mutual slight smile of complaisance, or of transient kindness, 
and then in a minute or two we had passed each other, to perform the 
same ceremony in some other part of the room, without any further 
recollection or care respecting each other. And yet these insipid assem¬ 
blages of people from a hundred miles’ distance are said to be, in a great 
measure, for the sake of affection, friendship, &.c. 

So in London lately, my acquaintance might happen, or might not hap¬ 
pen, to make a slight inquiry about some subject deeply interesting to 
myself; and if they had happened, by the time that I had constructed the 
first sentence of reply, the question was forgotten and something else ad¬ 
verted to. So one does one’s self in the same case; so every one does; 
we are interested only about self, or about those who form a part of our 
self-interest. Beyond all other extravagances of folly is that of expecting 
or wishing to live in a great number of hearts. How very reasonably 
probable is the prevalence of Godwin’s universal philanthropy! ! 

744. The eloquent Coleridge sometimes retires into a sublime mys¬ 
ticism of thought; he robes himself in moon-light, and moves among 
images of which we cannot be assured for a while whether they are 
substantial forms of sense or fantastic visions. 

746. Powers of Language. Qy. Are the powers—the capacity of hu¬ 
man language limited by any other bounds than those which limit the 
mind’s powers of conception ? Is there within the possibility of human 
conception a certain order of ideas which no combinations of language 
could express ? Would the English language, for example, in its strong¬ 
est possible structure absolutely sink and fail under such conceptions as 
we may imagine a mighty spirit of the superior or nether regions to 
utter—so frail as not to make these ideas distinctly apparent to the human 
mind, supposing all the while that the mind could fully admit and com¬ 
prehend these ideas, if there were any adequate vehicle to convey them ? 
Could divine inspiration itself, without changing the structure of the 
mind, impart to it such ideas as no language could express ? If a poet 
were to come into the world endowed with a genius, suppose ten times 
more sublime than Milton’s, must he not abandon the attempt at compo¬ 
sition in despair, from finding that language, like a feeble tool, breaks in 


JOURNAL. 


149 


his hand—from finding that when he attempts to pour any of his mental 
fluid into the vessel of language, that vessel in a moment melts or 
bursts ;—from finding, that though he is Hercules every inch, he is armed 
but with a distaft* and cannot give his mighty strength its proportional 
effect without his club ? 

748. The successes of intellectual effort are never so great as when 
aided by the affections that animate social converse. 

753. A great defect in the intellectual economy of my life; I have 

made many observations on men and things, but have let these observa¬ 
tions remain in insulated hits, and have seldom referred them to any 
general principles of truth, or of the philosophy of the human mind. 
Such observations have a particular use when applied to circumstances, 
but not the general use of perfecting system, or illustrating theory. Qy, 
Has this defect been owing to indolence or incapacity ? - 

754. Struck lately at observing in myself with how little change of 
feeling I passed from an address to the Deity, to an apostrophe to an 
absent friend. It was indeed a very dear friend. 

756. Every thinker, writer, and speaker, ought to be apprised that 
understanding is the basis of all mental excellence, and that none of the 
faculties projecting beyond this basis can be either firm or graceful. A 
mind may have great dignity and power, whose basis of judgment, to 
carry on the figure, is broader than the other faculties that form the su¬ 
perstructure : thus a man whose memory is less than his understanding, 
and his imagination less than his memory, and his wit none at all, may 
be an extremely respectable, able man—as a pyramid is sufficiently grace¬ 
ful and infinitely strong;—but not so a man whose memory or fancy is 
the widest faculty, and then his judgment more confined. Not but that 
a man may have a powerful understanding while he has a still more 
powerful imagination; but he would be a much superior man to what 
he is now, if his understanding could be extended to the dimensions of 
his fancy, and his fancy reduced to the dimensions of his present under¬ 
standing, the faculties thus changing places. 

In eloquence, and even in poetry, which seems so much the lawful 
province of imagination, should imagination be ever so warm and redun¬ 
dant, yet unless a sound discriminating judgment likewise appear, it is 
not true 'poetry; no more than it would be painting if a man took the 
colors and brush of a painter, and stained the paper or canvas with mere 
patches of color. I can thus exhibit colors as well as he, but I cannot 
produce his forms, to which his colors are quite secondary. 

Images are to sense what colors are to design. The productions of 
intellect and fancy combined are to those of good intellect alone, what a 
picture is to a drawing; each must have correct form, proportions, light 
and shade, &,c.,—with these alone the drawing may be pleasing and 
striking—at least it will do; the picture having both these recommenda¬ 
tions, and the richness of colors in addition, is much more beautiful and 
like reality;—but the drawing is preferable to a square mile of mere 
colors. 


150 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


In short no orator or poet can possibly be a better orator or poet than 
he is a thinker. 

757. Effect on my cast of ideas from musing so much sub dio. A sort 
of vacant outline of greatness; a wideness of compass without solidity 
and exactness. 

760. Divine wisdom has allotted various kinds and divisions of ability 
to human minds, and each ought to be content with his own when he 
has ascertained ivliat, and of what dimensions it really is. Let not a 
poet be vexed that he is not as much adapted to mathematics as to poetry; 
let not an ingenious mechanic regret that he has not the powers of elo¬ 
quence, sentiment, and fancy. Let each cultivate to its utmost extent 
his proper talent; but still remembering that one part of the mind de*- 
pends very much on the whole, and that therefore every power should 
receive an attentive cultivation, and that various acquisitions are neces¬ 
sary in order to give full effect to the one in which we may excel. 

To reason well, is most essential to all kinds of mental superiority. 
The Bible forcibly displays this division of forces, under the illustration 
of the human body, 1 Cor. xii. 

761. A very important principle in education, never to confine chil¬ 
dren long to any one occupation or place. It is totally against their 
nature, as indicated in all their voluntary exercises. Was very much 
struck with this consideration to-day. I was incommoded a while by 
three or four children in front of the house, who made an obstreperous 
noise, from the glee of some amusement that seemed to please them ex¬ 
ceedingly. But I knew that they would not be pleased very long ; ac¬ 
cordingly in about half an hour they were tired of sport, and went off in 
quest of something else. I inferred the impossibility, in the discipline 
of education, of totally restraining the innate propensity, and the folly of 
attempting it. 

762. Observed with regret one or two children of a respectable family 
mingling in this group with several little dirty, profane blackguards. 
Qu. As to the best method of preventing all communication of children 
meant to be educated in the best manner, with all other children, whether 
of the vulgar class, or the genteel, which will do as much mischief as 
the vulgar. 

764. Went to Thornbury Church, in order to ascend the tower, which 
is very high. Walked (Hughes and I) about awhile in the church. 
Saw one or two ancient monumental inscriptions, and looked with in¬ 
tense disgust, as I always do, at the stupid exhibitions of coarsely- 
executed heraldry. Ascended the tower. Observed both in the staircase 
of the tower, and on the leaden roof of the church, the initials of the 
names of visitants, some of whom must now have been dead a century. 
Reflections on the forbearance of Time, in not obliterating these memo¬ 
rials ; on the persons who cut or drew these rude remarks, their motives 
for doing it, their present state in some other world ; the succession of 
events and lives since these marks were made, &c. Waited a good 


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while before we could open the small door which opens from the top of 
the staircase to the platform of the tower. Amusing play with my own 
mind on the momentary expectation of beholding the wide beautiful view, 
though just now confined in a narrow darkish position. Difference as to 
the state of the mind, as to its perceptions, between having, or not hav¬ 
ing, a little stone and mortar close around one. Came on the top. The 
rooks, jackdaws, or whatever they are that frequent this kind of build¬ 
ings, flew away. So ere long we hope everything that belongs to the 
established church, at the approach of dissenters, will be off. 

Admired the extensive view; looked down on the ruins of an ancient 
castle in the vicinity; frightful effect of looking directly down much 
lessened by the structure all around the top, of turrets, high parapet, and 
a slight projection just below the edge. Yet felt a sensation; thought of 
this as a mode of execution for a criminal or a martyr. Endeavored to 
realize the state of being impelled to the edge and lifted over it. Endea¬ 
vored to imagine the state of a person whose dearest friend should per¬ 
haps, in consequence of some unfortunate movement of his, fall off; de¬ 
gree and nature of the feeling that would effectually prompt him to throw 
himself after; morality of the act. Qu. Whether either of us have a 
friend, for whom one should have thus much feeling ? Probability, from 
striking instances, that many mothers would do this for a child. 

Examined the decaying stone-work ; thought again of the lapse of 
ages ; appearance of sedate indifterence to all things, which these an¬ 
cient structures wear to nriy imagination, which cannot see them long 
without personifying them. Thickets of moss on the stone. Noticed 
with surprise a species of vegetation on the surface of several plates of 
iron. Observed with an emotion of pleasure the scar of thunder on one 
of the turrets. Sublime and enviable office, if such there be, of the 
angels who wield the thunder and lightning. Descended from the place 
to which we shall probably ascend no more; this partly a serious, pen¬ 
sive idea; yet, do not care; what is the place, or any place, to us ? We 
shall live when this is reduced to dust. 

765. Repeated feeling, on traversing various rural scenes, of the mul¬ 
titudinous, overwhelming vastness of the creation. What a world of 
images, suggestions, mysteries! 

766. We called on an affable, worthy, pious woman rather beginning 
to be aged (never married), who lives quite alone. Asked her whether 
she had not sometimes painful cravings for society. She said she had 
not; and that her habit was so settled to solitude, that she often felt the 
occasional hour spent with some other human beings tedious and teasing. 
We could not explain this fact. Long conversation, in walking on, re¬ 
specting the social nature of man. Why is this being, that looks at me 
and talks, whose bosom is warm, and whose nature and wants resemble 
my own,—necessary to me ? This kindred being whom I love, is more 
to me than all yonder stars of heaven, and than all the inanimate objects 
on earth. Delightful necessity of my nature ! But to what a world of 


152 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER- 


disappointments and vexations is this social feeling liable, and how few 
are made happy by it, in any such degree as I picture to myself and 
long for! 

768. Conjecture after observing the habits and conversation of some 
rustics, that, superstition excepted, these are identically the same as the 
habits and common places and diction of one or two centuries past. One 
thinks they could not have been at that time more ignorant, rude, and 
destitute of abstraction than now, and certainly the same causes that 
prevent acquisition will likewise prevent alteration. The degree remain¬ 
ing nearly the same, the manner cannot become much different. 

769. Visit to a farmer. Has a wife and ten children. A great deal 
of mutual complacency between this pair. The children very pleasing. 
Played with several of them, particularly a delightful little boy and girl. 
Observed the various animals in the farm-yard, .... Most amusing 
gambols of the little boy with a young dog. How soon children per¬ 
ceive if they are noticed. In many of their playful actions one cannot 
tell how much is from the excitement they feel from being looked at and 
talked of, and how much is from the simple promptings of their own in¬ 
clination. 

Observed a long time, in the fields, the down of thistles. Pleased in 
looking at the little feathery stars softly sailing through the air, and ap¬ 
pearing bright in the beams of the setting sun. But next observed the 
little sportive flies, that show life and will in their movements. What a 
stupendous difference! Talked on education. The advantages of a 
large family. Importance of making a family a society, so as to preclude 
the need of other companions, and adscititious animation and adventure. 
Absolute necessity of preventing as far as possible any communication 
of the children with those of the neighborhood. 

770. Very grand idea, presenting the sun and a comet as conscious 
beings, of hostile or dubious determination towards each other. The 
comet, though a less orb, yet fraught with inextinguishable ardor, passes 
near the sun in his course, and dares to look him in the face. The as¬ 
pect of fearless calmness with which the greater orb regards him. I 
have the image, but cannot express it.—Fingal and Cathmor, &c. 

771. Conversation on the philosophy of Prayer. Certain fact, that 
whenever a man prays aright, he forgets the philosophy of it, and feels 
as if his supplications really loould make a difference in the determina¬ 
tion and conduct of the Deity. In this spirit are the prayers recorded in 
the Bible. 

773. Conversation on cruelty, and the cruel sports particularly among 
children and very young persons. Is not the pleasure of feeling and 
exhibiting power over other beings, a principal part of the gratification 
of cruelty ? 

774. What a divine enchantment there is in mind in every age and 
form. I have felt it this morning with little Sarah Gibbs, a child of three 
or four years old, who cannot yet articulate plainly, but of very extraor- 



JOURNAL. 


1.53 


dinary character for observation, thoughtfulness, and grave, deep passions. 
I took her on my knee, played with her hands, stroked her cheek, and 
never felt so much interested by any child of her age. Not that she 
said anything scarcely; for though delighted as I knew with the atten 
tion of a person to whom she had been led to attach an idea of impor¬ 
tance, she was serious, confused, and as it were self-inclosed; but I was 
certain that I held on my knee a being signally marked from her co-evals 
by an ample and deep-toned nature, of which perhaps the country could 
not furnish a parallel. She has a strange accuracy and discrimination 
in her remarks, and a sort of dignity of character which yet is not 
mingled with vanity, but which f uts one on terms of care with her, and 
makes one afraid to treat her as a child, or do or say anything which 
may offend her sense of character. She is affectionate to enthusiasm, 
but without any childish playfulness. When angry she is not petulent 
but incensed. She is loquacious often with her companions and her 
school-mistress, but still it is all thought and no frisk. She is a favorite 
with them all. The expression of her countenance is so serious, that 
one might think it impossible for her to smile; indeed I have never seen 
her smile. Her parents are uncultivated people of the lower class, who 
have no perception of the value of such a jewel, and will probably throw 
it away. (Should not one be very much inclined to cite such an in¬ 
stance as something very like a proof, that children are born with very 
different proportions of the capability of mind ?) 

778. Mr. R. who has travelled over many parts of England, Scotland, 
and Wales, told me he had, at one time, a wish and a project to travel 
over France and the rest of the Continent. While musing on this favor¬ 
ite design, he one day entered the cathedral, at Worcester, in the time 
of service. Walking in the aisles, and listening to the organ which 
affected him very sensibly, his wish to travel began lo glow and swell in 
his mind into an almost overwhelming passion, which bore him irresisti¬ 
bly to a determination. He could not have felt more if he had seen an 
apparition, or heard a voice from the sky. Every idea on the subject 
seemed to present itself to his mind with a surprising vivid clearness 
and force ; and he believes, that from that moment, nothing could have 
prevented his undertaking the enterprise, but the commencement of the 
war. 

This seemed to me a happy illustration and proof of what I had main¬ 
tained a few days before, in a conversation on music, that it powerfully 
reinforces any passion which the mind is at the time indulging, or to 
which it is predisposed. This was maintained in opposition to several 
amateurs of music, who asserted that sacred music has a powerful ten¬ 
dency to produce, by its own inffuence, devotional feeling. They had 
mentioned, with strong approbation, a pair of reverend divines, who 
commonly make a small concert on the Sunday evening, and choose 
sacred music, as adapted to the day. The devotional effect of any music, 
except on devotional minds, was utterly denied and disproved; and it 


154 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


was asserted that a young man, very susceptible to the impressions of 
music, if inclined to vicious pleasures, would probably feel the sacred 
music inflame to intensity, and, at the same time, invest with a kind of 
vicious seductive refinement, the propensities which would lead him from 
the concert to the brothel. By the same rule a devout man, who should 
be strongly affected by music, would probably, if other circumstances in 
the situation did not counteract, feel his devotion augmented by pathetic 
or solemn music. 

779. What a stupendous progress in everything estimable and inter¬ 
esting would seem possible to be made by two tenderly associated human 
beings of sense and principle, in the course, say, of twelve or twenty 
years. Yes, most certainly ; for one has been conscious of undergoing 
a considerable modification from associating even a month with some 
one or two interesting persons. Only suppose this process carried on, 
and how great in a few years the effect; and why is it absurd to sup¬ 
pose this process still carried on through successive time in domestic 
society ? Yet how few examples of anything respectable in this way. 

784. What endless deceptions of the senses may happen. This morn- 
,ing 1 mistook one object for a totally different one, in passing it many 
times within a few feet; till I happened to examine it, when in a mo¬ 
ment the deception was destroyed. What a number of reports and 
recorded facts may be of this kind. 

789. Spent part of an hour in company with a handsome young 
woman and a friendly little cat. The young woman was ignorant and un¬ 
social. I felt as if I could more easily make society of the cat. I was, 
however, mortified and surprised at this feeling when I noticed it. It 
does, however, seem to be a law of our nature, at least of mine, that 
unless our intercourse with a human being can be of a certain order, 
we had rather })lay awhile with an inferior animal. Similar to this is 
the expedient one has often had recourse to, of talking a large quantity 
of mixed sense and nonsense to a little child, to even an insensible in¬ 
fant perhaps, from finding the toil or the impossibility of holding any 
rational intercourse with the parents. Fortunately, in this case the 
parents are often as much pleased as if one were talking to them all the 
while. One has, too, very often felt one’s self making the child a kind 
of substitute for the parent, and thus easily saying to the parent in fact 
a great many things, some of which would have seemed too trifling, and 
some too grave or monitory, to have been spoken directly to the mature 
person. 

790. Each fact that comes within one’s observation, and illustrates or 
suggests some useful principles of conduct, should be set down in the 
memory as a lesson for one’s own conduct, if one ever be in similar cir¬ 
cumstances. Remember then, in case of illness and confinement, to 
cause as little trouble as possible to attendant friends ; make a great and 
philosophic exertion to avoid this. There is good old Mr. B. here, a 
worthy man, and very kind to his family, chiefly daughters, all grown 


JOURNAL. 


155 


up, and most of them married. He has suffered a very severe illness, 
which made it indispensable for some person to sit up with him all night. 
For eight or nine weeks two of his daughters have fulfilled this office 
alternately, with an occasional exemption by the aid of a third person. 
Nothing can exceed their assiduity and affection, notwithstanding that 
he is an extremely tiresome patient. But owing to their having families 
of their own, they can seldom go to sleep during the day, after the 
watching night. The health of one of them especially, is suffering ma¬ 
terially, though she is far too generous to give him the smallest hint of 
it; and though he is greatly recovered, so as in the opinion of all his 
friends not to need this service now, yet he has no wish to dispense with 
it, nor seems ever to recollect how laborious and oppressive it must 
be ; and will not allow other persons, even one of his other daughters, to 
watch with him as substitutes sometimes, to relieve the two who have 
borne the main weight of the service, and who, he thinks, can do it bet- 
ter than any one else. Strange inconsideration. 

792. I observe that all animals recognize each other in the face, as in¬ 
stinctively conscious that there the being is peculiarly present. What a 
mysterious sentiment there is in one’s recognition of a conscious being in 
the eye that looks at one, and emphatically if it have some peculiar sig¬ 
nificance with respect to one’s self. A very striking feeling is caused 
by the opening on one of the eyes of any considerable animal, if it 
instantly have the expression of meaning. While the eye is shut the 
being seems not so completely ivith us, as when it looks through the 
opened organ. It is like holding in our hand a letter which we be¬ 
lieve to contain most interesting meanings, but the seal secludes them 
from us. 

793. A very respectable widow, who lost her husband ten or twelve 
years since, told me that even now the last image of her husband 
as she saw him ill, delirious and near death, generally first presents it¬ 
self when she recollects him. I always think I would not choose to see 
a dear friend dead, because probably the last image would be the most 
prompt remembrance, and I should be sorry to have the dead image pre¬ 
sented to me rather than the living. 

794. It is a great sin against moral taste to mention ludicrously, or for 
ludicrous comparison, circumstances in the animal world which are painful 
or distressing to the animals that are in them. The simile, “ Like a toad 
under a harrow,” has been introduced in a way to excite a smile at the kind 
of human distress described, and perhaps that human distress might be 
truly ludicrous, for many such distresses there are among human beings; 
but then we should never assume as a parallel a circumstance of distress 
in another subject which is serious and real. The suflerings of the 
brute creation are to me much more sacred from ridicule or gaiety than 
those of men, because they never spring from fantastic passions and 
follies. 

796. Qu. Whether two much attached friends, suppose a married 


156 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


pair, might adopt a system of confidence so entire, as to be total confess- 
sors to each other; disclosing, for instance, at the end of each day, all 
the most unworthy or ungracious ideas and feelings that had passed 
through their minds during the course of it, both with respect to each 
other, and any other question or thing ? 

What would be the effect of this on characters of given degrees ? and 
what degree of excellence must exist on each side, to prevent its having 
a most unfortunate effect on their mutual attachment ? 


XLII.* TO MISS MARIA SNOOKE. 
fOn the Metropolis, No. l.J 

J\f''ew Bristol, March 34, 1SU3. 

My dear Friend,— You have again been an observer now for seve¬ 
ral months of the various aspects of human life in the metropolis; a 
city exceeding, as to the number of inhabitants, and probably in many 
other respects, the far-famed Nineveh and Babylon. I have often 
thought of the interest I should feel in hearing you express the ideas 
suggested by the scene while they have the vividness of immediate im¬ 
pression. Perhaps these ideas would have been still more interesting if 
you had not become acquainted with the city at a period of life too early 
for thoughtful observance; and thus precluded in some measure from the 
impression of grand, diversified novelty, which is felt very powerfully by 
an observant person of mature age, and unaccustomed to the sight of 
great cities, on first entering this wonderful place. A person educated 
in a rural situation, if he have acquired the habit of viewing every 
scene with an appropriate feeling, and a mental scale of proportion by 
which to compare every new object with those known before, has a great 
advantage over one who has always resided in the metropolis, for seizing 
at least the superficial characteristics of the place. His attention is 
arrested by a thousand circumstances of significant peculiarity, of which 
a constant citizen has no perception, from having grown up amidst 
them, and from having no other sets of ideas and feelings to make these 
familiarized circumstances palpable by contrast. And even the visitant, 
if he protract his stay long enough to lose, if I may express it so, the 
separateness of his thought and feelings from the spirit of the place, and 
that freshness of mind which he brought from simpler scenes and con¬ 
templations, will find that he has lost much of his delicate perception of 
the distinctive appearances around him, so that he is scarcely conscious 

* This and the three following letters were prepared by Mr. Foster for 
the press, but laid aside as not suitable for a first publication. Vide 
Letter to the Rev, John Fawcett, May 23, 1805. 


LETTERS. 


157 


of noticing many things that at first glared on him with a most marked 
and obtrusive aspect. Are not you by this time sensible of something 
of this kind ? On this account it would be a good method just to note 
in writing the most striking impressions that are made on the mind in 
the first days or hours that are spent in any remarkable place. 

London is Really a very wonderful place. I do not so much refer to 
its prominent inanimate features, its great buildings, its repositories of 
art and curiosities, its shipping, and its magnificent mass of habitations. 
Accumulations of brick, stone, and wood, are of very subordinate ac¬ 
count, except indeed as some of them are the monuments of the in¬ 
dustry, ingenuity, or superstition of past ages, and others the indication 
of the condition of the present inhabitants. What strikes me infinitely 
more is tlie astonishing assemblage of human beings. One human in¬ 
dividual is to a thoughtful mind a most wonderful object; but in the 
midst of London you are conscious of being surrounded with eight or 
nine hundred thousand such individuals, collected together so thick and 
close, as to give at some moments the idea of one undivided, enormous 
living mass, of which the numerous streets are as the arteries and veins 
through whicli the stream of vitality is for ever flowing. You may walk 
on, and wonder where the moving mass will end. Ikit there is no end ; 
an unnumbered succession of faces still meets you, while you recollect, 
at every step, if thinking of what you see. These are not the same that 
I saw the last moment; and again. These are not the same that were 
passing me when I made that remark; what is become of all that are 
gone by ? You are apprised at the same time that there is a much 
greater number in the houses that you pass. Some parts are so crammed 
that one might suppose there was not a single square league of ground 
unoccupied on this side the x\rctic or Antarctic circle; or that if there 
be, some powers of pestilence and death possess it, and prohibit the in¬ 
trusion of man to seek there space, air, and freedom. Image to your¬ 
self at the same time, if you can, all the other numerous streets with 
their moving crowds, and the numbers in the houses on each hand ; and 
finally recollect that each of all this multitude has his thoughts, his tem¬ 
pers, his interests, and his cares, measuring still the importance of those 
interests and cares to each person by the importance which you feel in 
your own, and you will soon find that the contemplation and the scene 
contained within a few square miles, grows, like that of infinity, into a 
magnitude beyond^the compass of the mind. 

The extreme activity that prevails on every side, would seem partly 
allied to cheerfulness ; but I own that the reflections by which I am sub¬ 
ject to be haunted amidst this vast display of eager and gay activity, 
are not of a very cheerful cast. I should have a mean opinion of the 
moral sensibility of the man that should not be mournfully impressed by 
a view of the depravity that is obvious and apparent, and which is but 
the slight external sign and indication of the enormous measure of un¬ 
seen evil. This great city in desolation and ruins would be deemed a 


158 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


most melancholy spectacle ; but is it not much more melancholy to see 
on so vast a scale the dignity of man in ruins ? Do you not feel it an 
awful consideration as you traverse the city, that there constantly rests 
on a few square miles around you, a measure of vice sufficient to poison 
an universe of corruptible beings ? Do you not feel something like what 
might have been felt by a man standing amidst the streams of Egypt, 
wdien Moses had turned the waters into blood ? If depravity as an ab¬ 
straction could be clothed in a form which should render it perceptible 
by the eyes, the collective depravity of this magnificent city would be 
the most terrific and ominous apparition that man ever beheld. The 
fires and smokes that ascended from Sodom on its final morning, were 
not so dreadful an appearance as would be such a vision of its wicked¬ 
ness, and as would be such a vision of the vice.of a modern great city. 
T do not think this is the language of excess. Even a man who would 
take only the laws of the land for his rule of judging, if he believe, or 
nearly believe, the statements and conjectures of the author of the “ Po¬ 
lice of the Metropolis,” will stand aghast at the view. How much 
more melancholy, then, must it appear to a Christian moralist, who 
applies, even in the most candid spirit, the laws which determine the 
opinion of the Judge of the world ! 

It may be said, that if not a house of this city had ever been built, yet 
the persons who now inhabit it, wherever they had been scattered, would 
have had their vices. Yes, and those vices would have been too much 
for the happiness and moral beauty of the widest extent of inhabited 
country, over which they could have been diffused and attenuated. But 
in this scattered state they could not have stood up to view with the size 
and aspect of a frightful monster, such as they become when concen¬ 
trated into a tremendous aggregate in one place. And their malignant 
effect would have been much less, as they must have operated in detail 
and unconnected, not as in the combined powers of a prodigious engine. 
The scattered, minute pieces of depravity, if I may use the expression, 
would have had only the power of wasps and spiders ; by their conjunction 
they become a hydra with many and immortal heads. Scattered vice 
could nowhere have had a grand magazine from which the powers of 
mischief could have been diffused so far as the influence of an immense 
city is known to extend. 

I scarcely need to add the trite and obvious truth, that among a large 
assembly of men, depravity is augmented, not only in the simple pro¬ 
portion of the dispositions of the individuals, but likewise in proportion 
to the temptations, the facilities, the concealment, the sharpened intel¬ 
lects, the system, and the impunity, afforded by the combination of a 
multitude of similar dispositions. Probably it is a moderate supposi¬ 
tion, that the measure of depravity in London is twice as great as the 
very same persons could have attained i n opposite local circumstances. 

One thinks, that if it were any part of the business of governments to 
take care of the morals of a people, they would do everything consistent 


LETTERS. 


159 


with the spirit of freedom to prevent them from accumulating into large 
cities. But certainly luxury, commerce, and pomp, are considerations 
of greater moment than the public morals and happiness ! 

Perhaps one of the first ideas of a total stranger to great cities, on 
entering London, would be, that such an immense concourse of human 
beings, so closely contiguous to one another, must make it a very social 
state. Where almost the very air is warmed with the emanation of 
human life, where man meets the countenance of his brother every 
moment; w’here hundreds of families reside in a line, with only a few 
bricks between their abodes, and hundreds of others confront them at 
the distance of a few yards,—he might perhaps imagine a lively and 
ample circulation of fraternal kindness. Placed in such an intimate 
vicinity, they will almost have all things in common. What pleasures 
and pains of sympathy would he not imagine where there are so many 
to excite and share them ? He would soon find wdth surprise, that this 
crowded, contiguous state, is the most dissocial of all possible states of 
.human beings. He would find that men are drawn to the mass, and 
that the mass is drawn together, not by sympathetic, but by selfish afiec- 
tions. It is a large company of strangers, each one of whom is con¬ 
sidering how he may make his advantage of the rest, and totally uncon¬ 
cerned about their interests, if his own be successful. 

A man walks along, glancing consciously or unconsciously on the 
countenances of five thousand persons in an hour, most of them deeply 
interested either on immediate affairs or in the general pursuit of happi¬ 
ness, and feels not the smallest concern respecting any of them. If they 
were a long row of trees the feeling would be much the same ;—and he 
perceives tliat he is an object of equal indifference to them. The mo¬ 
mentary images of their features and expressions followed by others, all 
quickly vanish into oblivion. These faces may be seen no more ; and it 
is utterly of no consequence whether they be or not. An orange, for 
w'hich he has just given twopence, seems a thing of more interest to 
him than any one of those men that pass him. 

If I step into a shop on any trifling business, a few words and civili¬ 
ties are exchanged between me and the person who serves me; we re¬ 
cognize human nature on both sides, and in five minutes after we are non¬ 
existent to each other. I mingle again among men with the same indif¬ 
ference, though surrounded every moment by an incalculable proportion 
of happiness or misery, elating or lacerating the hearts of persons whom 
I just recognize as living substances, scarcely worth looking at, as they 
pass me, and are gone. 

The same principle of self-centring estrangement is apparent between 
families inhabiting adjoining houses, and even sometimes the same 
house, who are often as remote from each other, in respect of any 
friendly recognition, as if they inhabited the opposite extremities of a 
continent. 

How little kindness is felt for human beings as human beings, if they 


160 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


have no relation to my own advantage. Here, in the very heart and 
quintessence of the human world, where a thousand habitations of men 
may be seen at a glance, with doors that might give instant admittance, 
and tables at which the inhabitants regale,—a forlorn stranger, destitute 
of money, might faint and famish in the street, before kind-hearted man 
would notice or assist him; or if some slight relief is given—it is some¬ 
times, given—I have seen it given, with a hard insulting air and voice, 
which would have made me say, with myself. May I see that man no 
more for ever! 

All these things appear to me very disastrous, and very alien from 
the sentiment which should pervade all human hearts, which is ex¬ 
pressed by an ancient poet—“ I am a man, and therefore I regard nothing 
human as foreign to me.” But all this is the natural result of a vast 
and crowded population. For, in what manner is a kind sympathy to be 
cultivated ? No man’s heart contains a reservoir of kindness ample 
enough to be able to afford a friendly feeling to all and every one of a 
promiscuous multitude, most of whom are totally unknown to him, and 
the rest regarded simply as moving figures whose features he has seen 
before, or are recollected on the slender acquaintance of civility or 
fashion, or from transactions of business, without any approach to a 
reciprocation of heart. How is it possible to be affected with an ex¬ 
pressly kind sentiment for each one that he meets or sees of such a 
number ? If the multitude were to vanish away all but a very few, his 
benevolence would find it possible to take some account of them, even 
though they were strangers; but while the multitude still covers the 
scene, he can take account of none ; the individuals are lost in the mass 
from which his heart stands aloof. But to be thus surrounded and in 
contact with human nature, without being able to give the sympathies 
which in its own right it seems to claim, has a pernicious effect on the 
heart; it has more than a negative tendency to produce the coldest 
selfish indifference. A multitude of human beings is thus a cause of 
being less human, and an apology for it. The claimants being innu¬ 
merable exempts from the payment of the dues of cordiality to any. 

It would be impossible for the spirit of union and sympathy to per¬ 
vade so huge an aggregate, even if there were no definite principles of 
repulsion among them. But there are many. The ardent competition 
which inspirits a large portion of the activity of London, is most de¬ 
structive of all expansive sympathies. A man sees that many hands 
are stretched out to seize the advantage which he likewise is anxious to 
seize, and that no consideration of his necessities, or wishes, or weak¬ 
ness, will induce the smallest forbearance or compromise in the strife, or 
compassion for his disappointments if he fail. Each one deems that the 
prize would be his, but for these voracious animals that contest it with 
him; and if he gain it, the pleasure of securing the good perhaps de¬ 
rives a little additional poignancy from the mortification of his rivals. 
What must be the effect of such a process, indefinitely repeated, on the 


LETTERS. 


161 


benevolence with which a man ought to regard his fellow-men, in whose 
minds too the same process is operating, so that each justifies himself, if 
he thinks on the subject at all, by the necessity imposed on him by all 
the rest. Let any one recollect his own feeling, and the feeling appa¬ 
rent in others, when he has been in the midst of a crowd, at the entrance 
of some frequented public place, each struggling and pushing, himself 
among the rest, to enter first, for the convenience of accommodation : 
and he may imagine how much kindly, friendly softness of heart he 
should be likely to derive from habitually regarding human beings and 
himself, just as he regarded them then. 

Again, the absolute certainty of being surrounded by a multitude of 
cheats and miscreants, such a number as could exist nowhere but in an 
immense city, with the difficulty of knowing who they are, or rather 
who they are not, has a baneful influence on extended kindness in this 
city. It produces necessarily a reluctance to confide, a quickness to 
perceive the worse indications of character in a man’s manners, a sus¬ 
picious watchfulness, a promptitude to hostility. It has often struck 
me, even in passing along the streets, that the defensive and vindictive 
feelings reside very near the surface; the most trivial incivility would 
kindle anger; and the sort of half-resentful inquietude may be excited 
even by an earnest or lingering look. The social decorum is a kind of 
armed neutrality, and each man carries a ready-written declaration of 
war in his pocket, to be forthcoming at a moment’s warning. 

The innumerable precautions by day and night, for the security of 
habitations and property, indicate what every one thinks of .somebody 
else. 

Another cause of the little regard felt by individuals for the mass of 
humanity in a great city is, that number depreciates value. Human beings 
are made too vulgar and plentiful to be anything worth. You can find 
them in multitudes any time, anywhere—are common as swarms of flies 
on a summer’s day, and reduced to nearly the same insignificance, by the 
marvellous excess of their number (one is inclined to say quantity), and 
by the trivial importance which each is felt to bear to the whole; which 
whole, as I have said before, you can bring within no feeling of friendly 
approximation. The w’hole is a world, and an individual is but an 
atom; the one is too vast for your benevolent regard, the other too 
small. 

It would be curious to make a scale of degrees of importance, which 
human beings may have to each other, according to the degrees of the 
facility of meeting with them. I would begin with Robinson Crusoe, 
to whom the appearance of a man was a circumstance of infinite 
interest; I would advance next to a thinly-scattered population, like 
that of the back settlements of America, where the infrequent visit 
of a neighbor, wffio travels leagues for the interview, must be a we\come 
surprise; and so forward through the various stages of population till I 
came to London. What a difference between the feeling of the solitary 
12 


162 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


islander at the sight of a human countenance, and that with which you 
meet or pass any one of the men or women in Fleet Street! 


XLIII. TO MISS MARIA SNOOKE. 

[Oil the Metropolis, No. U.J 

March IS, 1S03. 

My dear Friend,— It might be said in opposition to these observations 
that the inhabitants of a great city have their families, their friends, and 
their acquaintance, forming round each a little sphere in which the 
sympathetic aflections are cherished, and powerfully operative ; and that, 
not only in a city but in every other place, it is impossible, except in 
cases of striking distress, to extend these affections beyond this circle 
with any warmth of individual regard. I allow that everywhere these 
active sympathies of the heart must be nearly bounded by this circle of 
exclusion ; so far the case is the same in a large and close population, 
and in a scattered and scanty one. In the one situation and the other, 
it is equally inevitable for the numbers on the outside of this circle of the 
affections to be held in comparative disregard. How then is this ex¬ 
clusiveness more contrary and injurious to philanthropy in the one 
situation than the other ? 

For one consideration ; it appears to me a most unfortunate circum¬ 
stance for philanthropy, when the disproportion between the number of 
persons to whom the heart can extend a definite sentiment of kindness, 
and of those to whom it cannot, is all but infinite, while they are yet all 
in the immediate neighborhood, and many thousands of them within 
perpetual observation. Amidst a scanty population, there is some evident 
proportion of number between these two divisions of human beings; in a 
very thin population it might be considerable; therefore there is some 
tolerable proportion between the measure of indifference and the measure 
of kindness which a man feels for the portion of humanity that is within 
his view ; which portion is to him practically the human race. In feel¬ 
ing a kind concern for a large proportion of the persons within this sphere, 
he approaches towards general benevolence, and is far removed from 
feeling a contempt for mankind. If he do not feel a friendly regard for 
a greater number of men than the inhabitant of a city does, yet a larger 
proportion of his feelings toward men are kind, because a far smaller 
number of men are at once seen, and yet consciously excluded from his 
benevolent concern. In a vast city the number of persons for whom a 
man can entertain any considerable degree of individual regard, compared 
to the immense number on the same spot to whom he is indifferent, 
appears almost nothing; yet this most inconsiderable particle, excepted from 
the grand assemblage, is placed in opposition to the whole, and monopo¬ 
lizes the exercise of liis affections. Thus the innumerable company 



LETTERS. 


163 


seems collected and placed to view on purpose to be slighted and despised. 
But I contend, that other things being equal, tliis must have a worse 
effect on benevolence and respect for man, than where a much smaller 
number of the race is constantly seen and disregarded. And again; in 
a great city this principle of exclusion not only operates against so vast 
a number as to be equivalent to a contempt and rejection of the collective 
human race, but it operates with a more positive repellency than in a 
different place. In a situation where the inhabitants are at moderate 
distances from one another, the multitude to whom it is inevitable for my 
heart to be comparatively indifferent being not obvious to me, being, per¬ 
haps, divided from me by brooks, or fields, or woods, the principle of 
exclusion is of a very quiescent nature. It does not need nor imply an 
anti-social precaution of the heart, not to extend my kind regard to objects 
that rarely come within my notice. In a populous city, on the contrary, 
as beings of my own great family press round me on all sides, and seem 
to reproach by their constant recurrence the selfish insulation and 
unconcern with which I am invested, it seems to require a harder array 
of heart, a more positive reaction, approaching to aversion, to preserve 
the indifference inviolate in this close and living vicinity. Either it 
requires this reaction to exclude the number of human beings that we 
meet, from the sympathy which we naturally feel for our kind, or in a 
great city the heart is delivered from the tendencies of this sympathy by 
its unavoidable extinction. Any way, the selfish principles must be 
more distinctly verified and kept in action, than where men are much 
more rare. / 

A large city certainly gives scope for the indulgence of the social dis¬ 
position, by the facility of acquiring acquaintance, perhaps even friends. 
But I think you will have observed among friends in London less of that 
mutual affectionate dependence, which is one of the greatest charms of 
friendship, than where the facility of acquiring friends is less. There are 
too many resources at hand to allow the feelings, deportment, and conversa¬ 
tion of one friend to become very deeply important to another. If a friend 
be alienated, it seems so easy to gain another, it seems so possible to 
advance an acquaintance into a friendship, and there are besides so many 
varieties and amusements to divert attention and occupy time, as pre¬ 
clude for the most part any severe anxiety respecting the disposition of 
an individual, unless a person of very unusual importance. Not to 
mention the numerous connexions and visits of mere routine, which have 
nothing at all to do with affection, I conjecture that the highest denomina¬ 
tion which you will be inclined to give to the greatest number of what 
are called friendships in London is, agreeable acquaintance. Whilst each 
one amidst the crowds of London feels the insignificance of the individuals 
all around him, I have often wondered how much importance in respect 
to the rest each one is inclined to attribute to himself. It is tolerably 
certain, at least, that no man thinks himself of such small account as the 
rest regard him, if indeed they observe him at all. In the most transient 


x64 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


observance, or passing along one of the most frequented streets, you can 
perceive a great many self-important airs. You might often be tempted 
to ask, “ What prince or princess can that be ?” if you did not know what 
a magnificent person is self in all his forms. 1 suppose that whatever 
consequence a man knows himself to possess, or imagines that he ought 
to possess, in some little sphere of society or business, he is apt uncon¬ 
sciously to wear the air of that consequence in the face of the large 
world, identifying that world with the diminutive sphere in which he is 
regent. If therefore the tenor of his feelings were to be put into a short 
speech, it would be to each man he met, “ Do you know who I am. Sir ?” 
A man who has been frightening the inhabitants of two or three poor 
tenements, because they cannot pay him his rent, walks like a great 
lord, with the conscious importance derived from the difierence between 
property and vassalage. A man who has been summoning his servants, 
to order and threaten them, comes forth with the authoritative aspect of 
commander-in-chief of an army. Nor can any senator carry along with 
him a clearer conviction that eloquence is the noblest of all human ac¬ 
complishments, than the man who has just conquered his speechifying 
antagonist in a pot-house. One is apt to fancy, at least, that one 
perceives, in meeting the succession of faces, who is accustomed to be 
somewhere listened to, flattered, feared, obeyed, or opposed. 

These are unconscious assertions of the importance which individuals 
carry about them, amidst the multitude that does not care for them. 
But the style of dress, houses, and equipage, is a direct appeal to this 
multitude respecting the importance of the exhibitors. For though the 
first object of this style may be to maintain what is accounted a 
respectability in that circle of acquaintance to which the exhibitor is 
personally known, yet there is a frequent recollection of the hundred 
thousand eyes which are to look attention, respect, inquiry, admiration, 
or envy. Is not this indeed a principal object of the rank itself ? What 
would the gaudy exterior at least of the rank be worth, unless there 
were a great number of less bedecked mortals to pay the homage of 
inferiority ? • 

You observe that the individuals who form the rank, or aspire to it, 
are, singly, richly endowed with its spirit and ostentation. But does it 
not strike you, that amidst so vast an aggregate of men there is a great 
miscalculation of the effect of individual display ? In a poor country 
village, indeed, a brilliant beau, or a brilliant fair, would be a conspicuous 
and resplendent object; and would certainly obtain a comfortable suffi¬ 
ciency of the devoirs of gazing wonder. But what is this object in 
London ? Out of this person’s visiting company, who takes any notice 
of all this laborious and elegant parade ? and what is the reward of all 
the care and expense deemed requisite to keep the exhibition fit to be 
seen ? 

If a man has his name on the door of a fine house, why, so are a 
thousand other names, which you may count in an hour, and find, when 


LETTERS. 


165 


you tell the last, that you have forgotten them all. But is it not very 
stupid of you not to recollect that Mr., or Dr., or Lord Such-a-one, 
claims your respect on the score of this fine house, and would deem it an 
immense degradation or misery to be reduced to inhabit a cottage like 
you ? And what is a chariot with rich liveries, and fine horses, in Lon¬ 
don ? It attracts not the slightest attention. You can any day see 
plenty such passing along a street, like bubbles along a brook; and so 
too, for what the passing spectators think or care, they might terminate 
their course. 

The case, however, is not entirely hopeless. Let a man of wealth 
and vanity (if the laws of poRce allow it, or obtaining a dispensation if they 
do not) harness twelve or more horses to his chariot, and he will tower at 
once like a fire-balloon, above the insignificant level where he has been 
but a common gentleman till now. Perhaps he has at this very time so 
many horses in the stable, and the public never the wiser. It is only for 
him to bring forth his resources, and his eclat will not only pervade all 
parts of the metropolis, but will soon reach every part of the kingdom, 
and perhaps be wafted over Europe and across the Atlantic. 


XLIV. TO MISS MARIA SNOOKE. 

[On the Metropolis, No. III.] 

March 22, 1803. 

My dear Friend, —I suppose no man in the display of elegance and 
splendor has much solicitude to do honor to the other men that compose 
his rank, nor even to his particular friend. He could afford none of this 
virtuous expense of care and money for the sake of maintaining their 
importance in society. His own self, then, is the idol to be enshrined ; 
and this interesting purpose is to be effected by a close resemblance to 
the style that prevails in his rank. But you would certainly wish so 
worthy a design to be accompanied by a more effectual method. As the 
object is to display the individual, the expedients employed ought, as 
much as possible, to distinguish the individual from his class, and from 
every social group where one is like another, and mark him with some 
original feature of this sublime; so that the whole wide public should 
soon come to recognize him, and each exclaim, “ Here comes the man i” 
But the present method of servile imitation throws the individual into 
the crowd of a numerous class—an undistinguished particle in the heap ; 
as you often seen a company of brother oyster-shells lying in the street, 
but I dare say never thought of remarking the important differences 
amon^ them; so too, I am afraid, you regard the little distinctions of 
one from another, of which many self-important persons are very vain. 
And probably just so the mass of mankind regards them, as they flaunt 
it a moment in passing, and then disappear. They must adopt some¬ 
thing bolder. 



166 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


If I were a man of rapk, I would not be a man of rank. I would turn 
fJie means of the rank, that is to say, if I had the vanity of ostentation, 
into the distinctions of the individual. No matter that the expedients 
might be too fantastic to engage respect. One should think that at this 
late hour of the world’s day and of human improvement, it is not exactly 
respect that any man can hope to command by the vain display of the 
present, or any exterior distinctions, which may be totally pure and 
separate from the smallest particle of virtue or sense. 

It is very amusing to observe the captivity to the principle of imita¬ 
tion on so vast a scale as it is displayed in a great city. It prevails, not 
only in the department which I have just noticed, but in every other ; 
and, consequently, the varieties of manners and character are incompara¬ 
bly fewer than the number of men. You seldom meet with the bold, 
independent spirit, which, without asking leave of the sovereign modes 
and prescriptions of society, has formed its own habits, and without 
ostentation of singularity, can preserve them. What a scene for 
observation, if the inhabitants of a great city were as independent in 
habits as they are dissociated in affection; and indeed it is somewhat 
strange that assimilation can be so extensive, while attachment is so 
restricted. But so it is, that each one seems anxious to be recognized 
as somebody, not in the designation of an individual, but in becoming an 
imperceptible component part of a bulk, by means of a servile conformity 
to the modes of general society, or to the modes prevalent in a large 
class. They are like the golden ornaments of the Israelites, which 
passed by a melting process from a multitude of diminutives into one 
illustrious calf. 

The power of fashion, for instance, though it may be true that its 
authority to impose on its votaries a precise and perfect conformity in 
minutiae is lessening, would yet in London mould fifty thousand persons 
in conformity to its most fantastic model in ten days, each of them being 
convinced of the truth of the maxim, “ Out of the fashion, out of life.” 
And as to the other less general distinctions, society is thrown, if I may 
use the expression, into a few great common-places ,—forms of life, not 
apparently so much intended to classify the men, as the men seem 
intended as materials to make up the forms, from each of which a few 
selections would give you a tolerable idea of the whole. 

The illustrations will be obvious to you. What do you think for in¬ 
stance of the class whose habitual business is to walk about, to see and 
exhibit forms and draperies, and to kill time ? If similarity can secure 
reciprocal complacency, they will not quarrel. They might make use 
of one another for looking-glasses. No counterfeiter of signatures, 
stamps, or quack preparations, was ever more careful of resemblamce. 

I need not mention again in this reference, the routine, the parade, the 
luxury, and the artificial politeness of those who are eminent in wealth 
and distinction. I suppose a striking mutual conformity will be acknow¬ 
ledged to pervade the rank. 


LETTERS. 


167 


What do you say of the great number who are devoting the whole 
energy of their being to the acquisition of large fortunes ? There are 
certainly more differences in this than in the former class; but yet, are 
not their habits, their diction, and their preference of topics, very charac¬ 
teristically, and very similarly tinctured ? 

I have been told that even many of the literary men are too specifically 
marked by the distinctions of a class. It is said that their conversation 
has too much of the technical forms and subordinate details of literature, 
which ought to be merged and lost in the spirit of it; and that sometimes, 
what should be the dignified and various sense of cultivated and thinking 
men, is buried under a certain conceited slang that indicates a company 
of authors. 

The middling people fall into several classes, being too numerous a 
body, and too much diversified by locality, by various degrees of distance 
from wealth and poverty, and by wide differences of accomplishment or 
vulgarity, to be harmonized into one class marked by uniform charac¬ 
teristics. 

_ It is not indeed acknowledged as a class by many of the persons who 
compose it, who are not, like those who form the superior divisions of 
society, vain of it, and watchful to guard it with clear and jealous dis¬ 
tinctions. You may observe a very prevalent wish to abdicate it, by the 
adoption as far as possible of the habits and distinctions of those whose 
means and state, however, defy their encroachment. The imitation too 
much resembles a string of boys, with paper helmets, and sticks for 
swords and muskets, mimicking “ the pomp and circumstance of glorious 
war,” in every place where a regiment of soldiers is stationed and pa¬ 
raded. 

I need not remark on the points of resemblance among the lower order, 
that instantly everywhere refer the individual to his division. Perhaps 
the systematically wicked may, in each of their several classes, have a 
stronger principle of conformity, an assimilation approaching nearer to 
identity, than any other part of the inhabitants. I think it is observable, 
as a general fact, that though there are in the moral catalogue as many 
vices as virtues, and though human nature is prone to the worse, yet 
vicious character is not a very diversified thing. Here and there a de¬ 
praved man of parts is able to expand the vicious character into latitude 
and variety; but the general operation of vice seems to be in a contrary 
direction; for while it degrades human faculties, it evidently contracts 
them to a narrower scope, and brings human beings the nearer together, 
the lower they sink, till at last they almost become one fetid, undistin¬ 
guished element. In plain terms, there seem to be fewer obvious ways 
in which men can be bad, than in which they might be good. If we hear 
that a man is eminently vicious, we seem at once to know what his vices 
must be; but if we hear of a man being eminently good, we feel a greater 
choice and perplexity of conjecture. This is in consequence of our ex¬ 
perience of the world having taught us, that vicious men are vicious 


168 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


like one another. And I have no doubt that if twenty remarkably good 
men, and twenty men bad in the same degree, were to be selected, the 
one company would be found to display far more diversities of excellence, 
than the other of depravity. Who has not been struck, when thrown 
awhile by some of the casualties of life into a circle of depraved men, 
in observing the gross coincidence of taste, tlie similar diction, the small 
number of associations, and the constant recurrence of a few topics,—in 
a word, the confined scope of vice to which even their passionate love 
of vice would extend their faculties ? 

If vice be subject to this sameness when indulged with the freedom of 
inclination, it is much more likely to be so when practised as a mean of 
subsistence, and adjusted into a regular system. I should therefore ex¬ 
pect to find the individuals of any one of the classes in London whose 
vice is their profession, to bear a mutual striking resemblance. Particu¬ 
larly there can be no chance for the growth of free natural varieties of 
manners and character among those men whose life is a dark seclusion 
from common human society, and whose combination is of the nature 
of a secret hostile empire under its foundations. The frequent occasions 
of deliberate concert, the necessity of deep and constant occupation in 
designs of one kind, the intense feeling that is kept alive in a system of 
daring and danger, and reflected among the associates; the conscious¬ 
ness, if they sometimes mingle in other society, that they are of another 
order, and that this order is the object of public fear and abhorrence; 
their peculiar diction, the suspicion and dislike that would instantly fix 
on any characteristic that should appear inharmonious with the spirit of 
the fraternity, and which might be deemed the omen of dissent or deser¬ 
tion, and the orgies in which alone they can give free scope to their social 
characters, and from which every being not connected with the order is 
excluded,—all these circumstances will tend to brand the marks of simi¬ 
larity on the whole connection, to dye their habits, if I may so speak, all 
of the same dark color, though there be some little difference of shades. 
Their characteristic sameness will be as great as the resemblance of 
countenances in a circle of gipsies round the dusky light of a midnight 
fire. 

In London the ostensible classes of society (the last mentioned division 
keeps in the back ground of course) appear to an observer in great pro¬ 
minence and magnitude, from the numbers that compose them; and con¬ 
sequently they appear in striking contrast. Each class may seem to 
you like an ample representation of all the people of the same order, in 
the civilized world, stationed close by other masses which appear as 
specimens of the other great divisions. An image, therefore, of the 
great social divisions of Europe is before you; what are your sensations ? 

In contemplating the two extreme classes in respect to the great 
object of human solicitude—the accommodation of life, you must not, 
you cannot deem them to belong to the same race ; as the symptoms of 
kindred that appear in their form, language, and wants, are so totally 


LETTERS. 


169 


contradicted by every other indication, except depravity. The prodigious 
contrast impresses a new spectator with inconceivable force in observing 
the scenes of the city, and incessantly prompts the question. How came 
the people that belong to two, into this barbarous mixture and vicinity 
in a place that was only made for one part of them, and where the other 
exists by tolerance, like the ancient Gibeonites, on subjection and hard 
labor, and sometimes hardly even on this ? 

You cannot assign them to a common nature; for, if you should con¬ 
struct a system of morals, dignity, wants, and enjoyments, ever so com¬ 
pletely adapted, as you had imagined, to the nature of man, you will find 
it inapplicable in every point. As to dignity, for instance,—if the dignity 
of the superior class consist, as all the world deems it to consist, in their 
exterior style, what does the dignity of the lower class consist in ? their 
vulgarity ? their poverty ? And as to wants—if one man, as he is called, 
want as much as fifty or a hundred others, which of these is the specimen 
of Man, and to which of them is your sapient system to be applied ? 
Apply it to which you will, you see it can take no account of the other. 
0r, if these opposites be, notwithstanding, both of the same family, it 
follows that man is a mere piece of material, created into actual cha¬ 
racter, of every diverse kind, by the caprice of circumstances. And what¬ 
ever you may say or fancy about the equality of the race, it needs only 
a little civilization to make one of them look down from a tower, and the 
other to look up through a grate. 

The parties themselves feel no relationship; and if the one should 
pretend it, the other would spurn the claim. But the claim is not pre¬ 
tended ; people have learnt to know their place, and to look with rever¬ 
ence across the awful chasm that divides the region of grandeur from 
the region of baseness. Some similarity of condition is an almost in¬ 
dispensable medium for recognizing a kindred nature; and a man of the 
lowest order is so indefinitely remote from this community of condition, 
that though he may look and see what there is in the world for some of 
the race,—if even in a dream of the night he were to be placed himself 
in the situation which he beholds every day,—his memory would re¬ 
cord that dream as the most extravagant of his life. 

And, on the other hand, do you not observe that those who hold the 
vantage ground in society rejoice in every event that increases, and are 
tenacious of every distinction that verifies and secures, the separation, 
and that nothing excites such terrible alarm as any circumstance that 
ever so distantly threatens an approximation ? A man who moves in 
affluence and splendor would be struck with horror at the idea of being 
himself placed in the precise condition to which he sees multitudes 
inevitably consigned ; but it is no matter of sorrow to him that they are 
in this condition; and if he hear among them the slightest murmur at 
the enormous contrast, he would deem it nothing else than faction and 
wickedness; but who, then, are they who are to be perfectly content and 
happy in the situation of which he would deem it insupportable to par? 
take ? I repeat, they cannot belong to the same race, 


170 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


You have often seen a miserable object lingering in the precincts of 
some of the abodes of grandeur. I have sometimes thought, that, speak¬ 
ing in the spirit of the present social order, one should be inclined to 
address him in some such manner as this: “ I cannot conceive what 
business you can have in these sumptuous environs, consecrated t^ 
everything that you must never enjoy. Is it possible you can expect 
some recognition of human kindred between the inhabitants of these 
mansions and such an object as you ? and that your looks of sadness 
shall touch compassion ? Poor wretch ! your ignorance deserves more 
pity than your wants. If you are man, these gaudy personages are 
something more, or something less. These children of magnificence 
have no respect for a nature which is seen degraded with poverty, and 
arrayed in rags : and no one can sympathize with what he despises. 
Pray take your sallow, emaciated form away, and ,die in some obscure 
recess, where there can be no chance of your disturbing a moment the 
enjoyments of luxury, or soiling the border of stately elegance. The 
death of many such beings as you would not be a circumstance deserv¬ 
ing to becloud the gay felicity of so delicious a place.” 


XLV. TO BUSS BIARIA SNOOKE. 

[On the Metropolis, No. TV.] 

JV'ear Bristol, April 2, 1803. 

Do you think, my dear friend, that the representation of the contrast, 
in my last, is too aggravated ? It certainly is most feeble, compared 
with the force of the impression which I have often felt in surveying the 
facts to which I refer. 

But consult your own observations and feelings. The scene is be¬ 
fore you. Observe the habitations of one of the divisions of society as 
you walk through some of the superb streets and squares ; and then 
pass, by a transition which you may make in less than two minutes, into 
some of the disgusting lanes and alleys—^the wretched abodes of which 
are much more crowded with human creatures than the sumptuous 
houses which you have just before seen. Compare next the dress, and 
whatever contributes to the commodious feeling, and the advantageous 
appearance of the person ; including, on the one side, all the convenient 
or elegant vehicles for the facility of movement. The contrast is equally 
ccimjdetq iu the much more important article of sustenance, whether as 
to the means of obtaining it, its plenty, quality, or variety. The dispro- 
portipn in this particular between the highest rq,nk and the lowest, if 
they be both men, is inhuman and horrible. 

Compare them in respect of the means of providing for their chil¬ 
dren, and of giving them some decent cultivation; as to convenience, 
attendance, and medical relief in the sad season of sickness ; as to the 
means of preserving some little dignity appropriate to man in the ar^ 



LETTERS. 


171 


rangements and intercourse of domestic society; and as to the possi¬ 
bility of indulging awhile in quiet and retirement, those tender sorrows 
for the dead which soften the heart, and are propitious to every virtue. 

Much of the contrasted allotment can be seen in the most transient, 
superficial view of the exterior of life in London. In one morning’s 
walk in this vast residence, you can pass through many of the divisions 
which exhibit such opposite conditions of human beings, that you will 
think they ought to be separated by an intervening space at least equal 
to one of the zones of the earth. Even the infinity of articles adapted 
to the commodiousness or decoration of life, which you see in the shops 
of any principal street, remind you of the vast number of persons who, 
passing close by these things every day, see them as far out of their reach 
as tlie moon or stars. 

The indication of the wretchedness of the abject class will constantly 
meet you, though you do not seek for them. But there is among the 
poor in this magnificent city a world of miseries unapparent to the pub¬ 
lic, and which the strongest effort of your imagination can but faintly 
represent. One real, well selected instance, actually inspected, would 
probably excite more emotion than the gloomy, expanded image merely 
of the whole. 

I have often thought and said, that it would be a most interesting un¬ 
dertaking for a man who should be rich enough to afford some little 
pecuniary relief in each case of distress which he found, to explore, 
through every part of London, all the retired scenes of misery caused 
by poverty, or attendant on it, to which he could introduce himself with¬ 
out serious danger, and even sometimes braving a degree of danger in 
the spirit of heroic philanthropy. Accompanied by some resolute friend, 
and fortified with every precaution against infection and violence, let 
him visit all the dark alleys and courts, the cellars and garrets, and pro¬ 
cure admission by the tones of kindness to the dreary apartments of 
disease and famine.* lie might easily obtain access to any part of these 
melancholy abodes. The refinements which are cultivated in polished 

* “ I am sorry not to have gained the knowledge which thirty or forty 
shillino-s v/ould have purchased in London. At the expense of so much 
spent in charity, a person might have visited just once eight or ten of those 
sad retirements in darkness in dark alleys, where, in garrets and cellars, 
thousands of wretched families are dying of famine and eWsease. It would 
be most painful,’however, to see these miseries without the power to sup¬ 
ply any effectual relief. At the very same time you may see a succession 
which seems to have no end, of splendid mansions, equipages, liveries ; 
you may scent the effluvia of preparing feasts ; you may hear of fortunes, 
levees, preferments, pensions, corporation dinners, royal hunts, &c., &c., 
numerous beyond the devil’s own arithmetic to calculate. This whole 
view of society might be called the devil’s play-bill; for surely this wmrld 
might be deemed a vast theatre, in which he, as manager, conducts the end¬ 
less, horrible drama of laughing and suffering, w'hile the diabolical satyrs 
of power, w'^ealth and piride, are dancing round their dying victims ; a 
spectacle and an amusement for which the infernals will pay him liberal 
thanks.”— MS. Journal, No. 452. 


172 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


life, if they could ever have been acquired by the poor, would long since 
have vanished under the pressure of far more serious feelings ] and the 
sacredness of sorrow, which dreads intrusive inspection, is no attendant 
on the victims of want and despair. Only he must have something to 
give, else he has no right to excite all the surprise and expectation which 
his visit will occasion, nor to ask an explanation of the sad circum¬ 
stances which he beholds. Besides, if he have a heart, it will be impos¬ 
sible for him to endure a succession of such spectacles, if he must leave 
them still as hopeless as he finds them. He will not a second time inflict 
on himself the feeling which must be awakened as he retires from one 
such abode, amidst the last looks and expressions of disappointment and 
anguish. 

He might in this manner take a personal view, in the course of a year, 
of many hundreds of most melancholy situations, of which the gay public 
takes no account. Let him then publish this whole assemblage of facts, 

‘ in the simplest mode of statement, and, checking that eloquence of pity 
and indignation, of which the scenes that would be disclosed to such a 
man would be the unrivalled school, what a tragedy he would unfold, 
beyond all that poetry ever dreamed! Or, if he could not find many 
such situations, or if he could aver that the sufferers can redeem them¬ 
selves from them if they choose, let him explicitly say so, and the 
compassionate part of the public will thank him for the information, 
that there exists less misery than they feared; and the splendid, selfish, 
and gay part of the public will welcome the assurance, that there are 
no claims on their sympathy which should divert their expenses and 
their cares from that style of life to which, however, they will not the 
less be consecrated, though these claims on sympathy be ever so real, 
and ever so numerous. 

But, my dear friend, it cannot be a question with you, nor with any 
other serious inquirer, whether these scenes exist, with all their aggra¬ 
vations. And yet these dwellings are close in the neighborhood of 
sumptuous residences, where every real and every artificial want is 
indulged to satiety, and folly squanders what appetite cannot devour. 
Near these places, and sometimes directly by them, the procession of gay 
figures, and the parade of ostentatious exhibition, is passing all the 
day. 

In civilisation, too, as well as affluence, London is deemed to excel, 
and does perhaps excel every other city. But what, then, must the less 
civilized parts of the world be, if the statements respecting this city be 
true ? Or what does civilisation consist in, or what is it worth, if its 
operation be not to ameliorate the general condition of a people, by 
reclaiming, as far as possible, the subordinate part of mankind from the 
debasement of vulgarity and ignorance, and to relieve them from misery, 
—and, on the other hand, to teach the superior classes that the want of 
condescension, humanity, and compassion, cannot be saved from final 
contempt by pomp and superciliousness ? 


LETTERS. 


173 


Is not this, again, the supreme city of the world as a Christian city ? 
Is not the religion of the Saviour of men, a religion of incomparable 
beneficence, extensively preached, believed, and love'd ? Yet the grand, 
essential spirit of that religion is to do all generous good, to visit the 
sick, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and to cure the despicable 
and cruel pride of worldly superiority. And can there be, then, where 
this sacred cause prevails, many thousands of abodes that are desolate, 
and hearts that are sad, for want of what Christians, in the same city, 
could easily impart to them ? 

I rejoice to believe that there is, in London, a large measure of sincere 
Christianity ; but the whole mass of misery which might be relieved, and 
is not, shows you what a measure there is not; that is to say, if our Lord’s 
prophetic description of the Last Judgment do really exhibit the great 
test of Christian character. But if the whole amount of that suffering 
which the affluent might remove, without reducing their enjoyments 
below a sober Christian estimate, be so much crime, is not the charge 
of very awful magnitude, however it may be divided, or wherever it may 
mainly fall ? It appears to me of urgent and solemn importance to each 
of the rich people who make a particular profession of the religion of 
Christ, to be able to stand forth and say, “ I am not guilty of this charge 
on others be this sin, which will meet the strongest Condemnation of the 
last day: all that an individual can do, I do.” And can they, my dear 
friend, pronounce this deliberately and firmly, amidst that style of luxury 
and conformity to the world, in which you have had occasion to see that 
some of them indulge ? 

Among your observations on London, it will have occurred to you how 
much familiarity with misery lessens pity. One cause of this is, what I 
have mentioned before, the low value set on human beings where they 
are so immensely numerous. Where the beings themselves are regarded 
as insignificant things, of course their sufferings in general can excite 
but little interest. But, besides, perhaps no sentiment of the heart is 
more reluctant to a frequent or continual exercise than pity, except in 
regard to the distresses of some object that is singularly dear. The 
occasions that claim this feeling occur too often even in a place of 
moderate population, for each one of them to excite the degree of it 
which it seems to deserve ; but, in London, a heart that could not become 
duly hardened under the repetition of impressions, would be persecuted 
to death. But the frequency destroys the effect. Fatal accidents, such 
as fires, persons being drowned in the river, or falling from scaffolds, or 
being crushed by carriages, are not so unusual as to connect any melan¬ 
choly association with the place or the cause, or to haunt the spectators 
with a long mournful remembrance.. The instant and continual inter¬ 
vention, too, of things which make an opposite impression, diverts the 
sad feeling away. The scene where any melancholy catastrophe hap¬ 
pens, has not the sedateness and quiet which, by presenting but this one 
object, enables it to absorb all the thought and feeling in fixed musing. 
If a man fall down dead in the street, he is taken away, and perhaps in 


174 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ten minutes after a showman, with dancing bears and monkeys, comes 
and excites merriment on the very same spot. Or, if no ludicrous 
spectacle be presented, yet the constant buzz, and noise, and activity, 
tend most effectually to obliterate every sad impression. The confused 
mixture and rapid succession of all kinds of events and sights, inevitable 
in a great city, where the same day is appointed for weddings and 
funerals, balls and executions, gives no distinct, protracted space for 
reflection to rest on any of them. Those, among the rest, that seem 
adapted to awaken and cherish pity, have their moment, and are gone. 

The number of wretched spectacles in human form which everywhere 
meet the sight, would at first excite, in a cultivated and humane mind, a 
mixture of pity and horror. The first momentary promptings of benevo¬ 
lence would be to attempt something to relieve them; and when the 
number instantly proved that to be hopeless to ah individual, he would 
feel a painful, shrinking repugnance to meet them, or pass anywhere 
near them; he would, from humanity, do that which the Levite did from 
the want of it, “ pass by on the other side.” But you observe, that after 
these spectacles have been familiarized by frequency and time, even 
humane persons can pass them almost without perceiving that they are 
there; or with a feeling of more disgust than compassion if they do 
perceive them. 

The number of beggars who, in every part of the city, look you in the 
face, and bespeak your notice with humble attitudes and tones of sorrow, 
have a destructive effect on the disposition to pity. There is the same 
reason why you should give to many as to one, and yet you cannot give 
to them all. You must therefore content yourself as you can, to see 
several thousands of your race depend, for what you know, this day, for 
a morsel of bread and for life, on the casual trifle that may be given 
them, or may not; and learn to look on the features of misery, and hear 
the language of supplication with perfect indifference. For a person of 
feeling this is a great achievement; and therefore it is found requisite to 
fortify the heart against the class of indications naturally adopted to 
awaken pity, by a recollection of all the instances and stories of the 
imposition and roguery of this unfortunate class of persons, and to hold 
a steady persuasion that the greatest number that appear, and conse¬ 
quently each one in the succession, are cheats, who would play on com¬ 
passion by the false semblance of distress ; and this persuasion you must 
not the less retain, though you see the evident proofs of old age, debility, 
or withered famine. This complacency of indifference is so completely 
possessed by the greatest number of those who pass, that you will observe 
them smile at your simplicity if you take any particular notice of any of 
these forlorn objects. No one doubts that there are a great number of 
cheats, but you have only to open your eyes to be convinced that very 
many are suffering objects ; and it cannot be too often repeated, that the 
habit of thus looking on misery, without pity, is most baneful to the 
heart. Who can tell how far into the whole system of the benevolent 
affections the noxious effect may extend? 


LETTERS. 


175 


' Compassion for the suffering of the animal tribes is likely to be greatly 
injured in London, by the constant sight of the condition and treatment of 
horses, particularly those of the hackney coaches, and of the stage 
coaches from the villages and towns in the neighborhood of the city. 
.... You have seen these ill-fated creatures, old, blind, ill-fed, wound¬ 
ed by the harness, and panting for life, yet suffering all the execrable 
barbarity of wretches in the form of men, but with the spirit and lan¬ 
guage of hell.This is a bad world for whatever is innocent and 

useful, if it be defenceless too. This spectacle is continually witnessed, 
and deemed too trivial for feeling or abhorrence, except in some singu¬ 
larly atrocious instances. Introduce the topic, if you please, in a polished 
company, and see how many persons will attach the smallest importance 
to a consideration which appears so interesting to humanity. I have 
known the whole subject turned into ridicule by persons whom I had not, 
till then, deemed altogether destitute of feeling. This insensibility to 
obvious and multiplied animal sufleriug, must surely be the result of fa¬ 
miliarly seeing it. But a city residence ought to make no trifling com¬ 
pensation to the qualities of the heart, in some other w’ay, for such a 
serious deduction from its capability of feeling compassion. Let it be 
considered, too, that the same cause early produces the same insensibility 
in the minds of children: how different a process from the discipline 
requisite to produce that anxious and sacred tenderness to feeling, that 
fear of hurting what has life, which a completely thoughtful and humane 
parent would be solicitous to cultivate in the young mind in precedence to 
every other moral principle, inasmuch as cruelty is tlie most hateful of all 
the possible forms of depravity. 

.... I have taken no notice till now of what appears to me the most 
melancholy of all the circumstances of a great city—the number of un¬ 
fortunate females. The greater number of these persons were originally 
capable of all the kind and dignified social sympathies,,of the sweet cha¬ 
rities of domestic life ; and what is their present condition, sunk in the 
most degrading forms of vice, and the most unpitied forms of misery— 
thrown off with aversion from the society and affections of their own 
sex, and the alternate allurement and contempt of the other ? What a 
contamination and destruction of all the sensibilities that can make hu¬ 
man beings interesting to one another! . . . . 

.... My dear friend, you will be tired with this extended and inces¬ 
sant invective. If you think it extravagant, you must allow me to plead 
that I am but a savage, a mere simple savage; I might have quitted but 
three months since the American wilds, so little can I comprehend the 
system of an European city, where all human improvements are deemed 
to have attained the most elevated pitch that the world ever saw. 1 may 
in due time obtain the perceptions of wise, civilized men, and cordially 
adopt the consolatory creed which, if they are at'ease themselves, I ob¬ 
serve they zealously maintain, in spite of all the miseries around them, 
viz. that things are just as they should he. That time, how^ever, I am 
afraid is remote. 




176 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CHAPTER IV. 

REMOVAL TO FROME-^PUBLICATION OF THE ESSAYS-ECLECTIC RE¬ 
VIEW-MARRIAGE. 

1804—1808. 


Mr. Foster had resided about four years at Downend, when, 
in consequence chiefly of the high testimony borne to his charac¬ 
ter and abilities by Mr. Hall, he was invited to become the min¬ 
ister of a congregation meeting in Sheppard^s Barton, Frome. 
He removed thither in February, 1804. “ It is a.new place,” he 

tells Mrs. Mant, “ from which I write to you. And what place 
is this Frome? you will say, and how came you to be there? 
My good friend, Frome is a large and surpassing ugly town in* 
Somersetshire, where the greatest number of the people are em¬ 
ployed about making woollen cloth ;—where there are several 
meeting-houses, and among the rest one where a Mr. Job David 
was a long time the preacher. This place he left some time since, 
after avowing himself a Socinian, which he had for some time 
been partly thought, but had not avowed himself to be. The 
congregation was nearly reduced to nothing before he left it. To 
this situation I was some time since invited, and was induced, 
from several considerations, to accede to the invitation. I am 
now considered as settled here. Among these considerations, un¬ 
doubtedly one was, some advantage in respect of pecuniary means. 
But the difference in this respect is not such as to have been a 
strong inducement, if there had not been other considerations con¬ 
cerned. I have experienced the greatest Kindness at Downend, 
and left my friends there with regret; a sentiment which 1 be¬ 
lieve I caused as well as felt.” To another friend (Mrs. Gowing 
of Downend) he says, “ I experience much more kindness here 
than my social, or rather unsocial dispositions deserve ; and more 
than I should experience if those dispositions were fully known. 
You will not suppose me foolish enough to tell them all. I often 
make myself quite a social man ; and if I do this you know, and 
perform the social duties, nobody has a right to complain. It as 
not, however, by going very often into society that I evince my- 


FROME. 


177 


seif a social man, but behaving with decency when I am in it. 
To do this, is but the very lowest degree of propriety certainly, 
and especially when some of the persons I am sometimes with^ 
are persons of sense and great worth. I avow to you, I wish I 
were much less monkish, and much less in danger of sometimes 
approaching to misanthropy. To the family in whose house I am, 
I behave, I assure you, with great propriety, and give them but 
little trouble. I spend with them but extremely little time be¬ 
yond inevitable occasions; and I dare say they are mistaken 
enough to suppose me one of the most studious men on earth. I 
. never think of fairly sitting down for a conversation, nor even 
think of introducing any of those topics that have so often kept 
us up in your disorderly house till twelve or one o’clock. No, 
we are sober people here, and having taken our supper, go to 
bed, at least vanish from one another’s sight. They are very 
-worthy people, and good natured; and to me they are even more 
than sufficiently attentive. They have a fine boy about nine 
months old, that sometimes amuses me very much. They are 
young people in Wesley’s connection, keep a school, and have 
some property independently. The house is large ; so that I feel 
no inconvenience at all from the school. I sleep in a small 
chamber, the very room in which Mrs. Rowe died; and have for 
my studying (if I ever did or could study) a room that was added 
to the house not many years since,—an exceedingly spacious 
room, with a rural prospect before it, but not comparable to the 
horizon seen from your windows. In this I pass the greatest part 
of my time; for I scarcely ever take any walks, not oftener at 
any rate than once in several weeks; though there are at the 
distance of a mile or two some very pretty scenes, in the form of 
narrow valleys, and sometimes rocks on each side. 

“The congregation here is still small, though not quite so small 
as at first. In the evening, generally, there are as many as 
would make a pretty good congregation for the meeting at Down- 
end, but the size of the meeting makes these appear but few. I 
have not yet attained, nor probably ever shall (from the loftiness 
of the house I suppose it may be), the power of talking away 
with that rapid facility that I had sometimes at Downend. I am 
obliged to speak more slowly, and that makes me speak more in 
one set manner, and deprives me of those variations of manner 
which accompany a talking style of preaching. I am likewise 
obliged to take somewhat more previous pains with my sermons, 
13 


178 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


as I cannot so well trust myself to the resources of the moment. 
In consequence of this I seldom make a sermon quite so bad as 
I sometimes did in your neighborhood ; though I doubt on the 
other hand whether I have ever made one so good as some of the 
most successful of those you have heard. My greatest difficulty 
is to feel the influence of religion in my own mind, a sufficient 
degree of which would inspire in public a zeal and energy that 
would easily triumph over a few difficulties, and most of all over 
that barren, uninterested coldness which I so often feel and de¬ 
plore. My dear friend, to cultivate individual Christianity is, 
and probably ever will be, the greatest of all our difficulties. 
Do you not find it so? With a full measure of this religion in 
the heart, half the gloomy feelings of life would vanish; for the 
prospect of its end would be divinely animating, and all the cares 
of the course would be alleviated by a habitual trust in Provi¬ 
dence, and a solid assurance of all dispensations and temporary 
evils tending and conducing towards final and infinite felicity. 
Let us then resolve to make more vigorous and constant efforts to 
obtain a large augmentation of this internal, this infinite and 
never-failing consolation. This is the only kind of labor, expe- 
rie^e and reflection continually tell us, of which the result is 
infallible and infinitely estimable. Be this then our earnest care. 
If this concern go right, nothing else will long bo suffered to go 
wrong. The shortness of this vain life, if it is thus employed, 
will be the grandest consolation. And this sacred possibility of 
making the shortness of life a felicity, is so much the more wel¬ 
come that there is nothing I have yet found, or expect to find, that 
can make long life deserve to be esteemed a felicity.” 

It was during his residence at Frome that the “Essays,” by 
which Foster attained his great celebrity, were published. They 
appear to have originated in his conversations with the interesting 
friend (afterwards Mrs. Foster) to whom they were addressed, 
while on a visit to her brother-in-law, the late Dr. Joseph Mason 
Cox, of Overn. “ In our many conversations while you were 
here,” Foster observes, in a letter designed to be introductory to 
the Essays,* “ it could not fail to occur to us, by what a vast 

* “ It will not seem a very natural manner of commencing a course of 
letters to a friend, to enter formally on a subject, in the first sentence. In 
excuse for this abruptness, it may be mentioned, that an introductory letter 
went before that which appears first in the series ; but as it was written 
in the presumption that a considerable variety of subjects would be treated 
in the compass of a moderate number of letters, it is omitted, as being 


ESSAYS. 


179 


Vvorld of subjects for consideration we are surrounded. Any 
glance into the distance in quest of a limit, found no limit to the 
dilfused and endless multitude of subjects, though it would soon 
find one to the power of investigating and undei*standing them. .. . 
In these letters I shall revive some of the subjects which engaged 
and interested the social hour, and shall perhaps recall some of 
the hints or views that there presented themselves, in order to dis¬ 
play them with greater amplitude and precision.” 

In writing to Mrs. Mant from Frorne (June 20, 1804), Foster 
says, “ I have confined myself very much, for many months past, 
about literary business, in which I expect to be confined for 
months and years to come, should life be prolonged. Having 
been idle almost all my life, I am at last become diligent, which 
I hope I shall continue to be, the remainder of it. I hope to be 
always constrained to it by a sense of duty; at present the want 
of that same metal, which I have lost all hope, at last, of gaining, 
by the discoveries of dreaming, is an additional stimulus. One 
part of this labor has been about a volume which I have written, 
and am sending in two or three weeks to be printed; from which, 
however, I do not expect much pecuniary advantage, as being a 
first production of a quite unknown person. If, however, the 
first should be successful (a very uncertain experiment), I may 
produce more, and the second will have a better chance, if the 
writer have gained any notice by the first. The first volume 
will, I suppose, be several months in printing. It is on a very 
few subjects, partly moral, partly philosophical (as it is now the 
fashion to call so many things), and partly religious. The 
writing is not without some merit, at least in parts; though I can 
easily imagine to myself something better done, incomparably, 
and though no reader will probably see more clearly where and 
what the faults are, than I shall myself. ... I think I have not a 
great deal of vanity, that is, the love of praise. I feel I have 
some of it, and there is nothing that excites, when I reflect, more 
self-contempt than this feeling. To seek the praise that comes 
from God only, is the true nobleness of character: and if the 
solicitude to obtain this praise were thoroughly established in the 
soul, all human notice would sink into insignificance, and vanish 

less adapted to precede what is executed in a manner so different from the 
design .”—Advertisement to the first edition of the Essays, p. vi. This 
letter the Editor has the satisfaction of inserting entire in the corre¬ 
spondence 


180 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


from regard, except as a good man might consistently wish for 
the favor of men, in order to influence those men to what is good, 
by means of their opinion of him; or again, as it may be very 
correct to wish to gain the applauding feelings of a few dear 
friends and connexions, in order to secure more completely their 
affectionate feelings.” 

In his next letter to the same correspondent (April 25, 1805), 
he explains the cause of the delay in the publication of the work. 
“ When I wrote to you last, I believe I told you I had completed 
a task of authorship on which I had been employed a year or 
two before. What a fool I was, even so lately as when 1 told 
you this. 1 had, it is true, written more than enough for a con¬ 
siderable volume, but I had not begun to revise and correct it in 
order to write it for the press. When I began this work, and 
had proceeded a little way, I found I had a job on my hands, 
with a vengeance. To my astonishment and vexation, I found 
there was not a paragraph, and scarcely a sentence, that did not 
want mending, and sometimes that whole pages could not be 
mended, but must be burnt, and something new written in their 
stead. This w^as often a most irksome and toilsome business, 
much more so than the first writing. On the whole, I verily be¬ 
lieve the revision and new modelling of the job has cost quite as 
much mental exertion as the original writing of it. In this busi¬ 
ness I have been employed ever since the time that I wrote to 
you, and that was last summer, till very lately. This exercise 
has, however, been a most excellent lesson in composition, so that 
I shall in the next instance do better the first time, and therefore 
never have again such a long and irksome task. This task is 
finished a little while since, and I am now presenting myself to 
the public."’ 

Before the manuscript was sent to the press, th» author sub¬ 
mitted it to the critical judgment of his friend Mr. Hughes. “ I 
like,” he says, “ the method and distinctness of your remarks. It 
is needless, I suppose, to observe, that freedom and even severity 
on your part, and obstinacy on mine, are to be held entirely war- 
ranted and innocent. As to the doubt which you express, whether 
you shall be entirely obsequious, I do not know how much it im. 
plies ; but certainly I should myself, in this same case, feel the 
duty of an absolute practical obsequiousness, however my own 
opinion might differ, except in the case of some obvious inad¬ 
vertency, and this I believe will rarely occur in my manuscript, 


ESSAYS. 


181 


since the care has been very great. I am glad of your remarks 
not the less, and am certain, independently of examining them, 
of profiting by many of them. I would make one remark once 
for all, viz. that when a man has written so much as to have 
formed his style, it will have a certain homogeneity, from which it 
will result tliat the substitution of different forms of expression 
will not always be an improvement, even when they are better in 
themselves, since they may not be of a piece.” 

On the publication of the work, Mr. Hughes, by his personal 
exertions, circulated nearly one-fifth of the whole edition. He 
presented copies to Mr. Wilberforce, Lord Teignmouth, and other 
persons of note and influence. “Horne Tooke has your volumes,” 
he tells Mr. Foster. “ I went over to make him a helper. He is 
considerably an approver. He says, ‘Let him simplify ; there is 
a basis of good sense. If he is a young writer he will do.’ I 
requested him to mention the publication : he will.” In about 
four months a second edition was called for. “ The degree of 
success,” Foster remarks, “ is indeed very unusual. I trust it 
is a direct favor and interposition of Providence, both for public 
utility and personal happiness. It will have been preceded and 
accompanied by numberless supplications of great sincerity and 
earnestness; a very principal part of which have been employed 
to ask for more of the spirit that would devoutly and benevolently 
wish to do good. I feel and lament a great deficiency in this 
point; but I am not content to do no more than feel and lament 
it.”* 

The autumn, and the greater part of the winter, were devoted 
to a careful revision of the Essays ; of which he gives the follow¬ 
ing account to a friend at Downend. “ I have been excessivelv 

O 

busy this, and many past days. If you ask. Busy about what ? 
I answer. Mending and botching up bad sentences, paragraphs, 
and pages. That book that I published had at least five thousand 
faults ; and two or three thousand I have felt it necessary to try 
and mend. Many of them I have certainly mended ; but perhaps 
in some places I have made new faults in trying to correct the 
old. The book will be in substance the very same; but very 
many pages, and a multitude of single sentences will be very 
different. Many sentences are left out, and many others put into 
so different a form, that they will not appear the same, even as to 


To Mr. Hughes, Sept. 3, 1805. 


182 


LIFE OP JOHN FOSTER. 


the idea. One great advantage I believe will be, that there will 
be much fewer obscure passages ; you will feel that you under¬ 
stand more clearly than in reading the first edition. When I 
began correcting, I intended to alter but little, as I was not com¬ 
pletely aware that great alterations were necessary; and as I did 
not wish any proprietor of the first edition to feel as if it were 
gone out of date in consequence of the new one ; but when I went 
in earnest into the examination, I was confounded by meeting such 
an immense crowd of faults. I found that I must dismiss all 
delicacy respecting the first edition, and alter everything without 
ceremony. A great many needless words, and some that were 
too fine, have been sent about their business. Many long sen¬ 
tences are made shorter ; many imperfect arguments are made 
fuller and clearer. The pages will have somewhat more thought, 
and somewhat less show. Several figures are dismissed. The 
connexion of thought is made somevyhat more close and clear. 
There will not, however, be any such effect produced as to lead 
any reader to guess at the degree of labor which it has cost. This 
labor is not yet finished, nor will be, for at least a month. I shall 
have hard work every day for so long. About that time I expect 
the printing to be finished ;—it is advanced a considerable way 
into the second volume. . . . Two or three reviews have praised 
the book ; one of them a good deal beyond its merits. But besides 
a number of magazines, there are at least half a dozen reviews to 
come, from not more than one or two of which I can expect much 
favor. I have written to the principal ones to mention that a 
second edition will soon be printed, and tell them that if they are 
disposed to be liberal, they will review that instead of the first, 
unless their arrangements are already fixed. It is hot improbable 
that this may be the case with one or two of them, and therefore 
I shall receive a public whipping, a week and two thi’ee days 
hence. If none of them mention me at that time, I shall be 
pleased; as I shall then reckon on their waiting till I shall appear 
before them in a better dress. But, however, that will not save 
me from the severe whipping, or else the contemptuous slight, of 
the greater number of them. I shall open each of them in suc¬ 
cession as I receive them, with this expectation; excepting, as I 
have said, one or two, from which I have some cause to expect a 
politer treatment. Hughes, however, tells me that as far as he 
can judge, I may on the whole bid them defiance, for that the 
volumes have excited so much attention that they will, in some 


ESSAYS. 


183 


degree, make way for themselves. The review which I men¬ 
tioned as having praised loo much, though at the same time it by 
no means omits to censure, was written by Mr. Hall. What a 
melancholy circumstance it is that he should at this time be your 
neighbor for such a cause. Every recollection of thi« gives me a 
feeling of gloomy regret. We had hoped that the calamity might 
never have returned; but now, if he should recover, the threat¬ 
ening omens will always hang over him. It is a most mysterious 
dispensation that so strong and sublinKi a spirit should be thus 
humiliated. You often hear about him, it is probable, and no 
doubt the splendor of his mind often breaks out through the shade 
that surrounds it. I hope he will yet be all himself again, and 
enjoy at least intervals of life free from this affliction. What a 
very, very deplorable thing it is that he has not written a great 
number of volumes; I never think of this without extreme regret; 
he would then have instructed and delighted to the end of time, 
even though his intellectual career had now been closed.” 

To Mr. Hall’s review of the Essays he again adverts in widting 
to Mr. Hughes. “ I have read this critique on J. F. It has 
an odd effect to see a name one is so familiar with, connected with 
public notices, praises, &c. I am glad the editor did change 
such an expression as you mention originally to have been in the 
critique. A number of the expressions, as they now appear, will 
probably be deemed extravagant by most readers of the Essays, 
who may see also these remarks. I have here an occasion of 
verifying that vanity is not the predominant vice of my mind. 
These praises give me but very little elation, nor would they if 
they had been less qualified with accompanying censure than they 
are. The idea that circulated commendation will assist to sell 
the work, and so may contribute towards an object which cannot 
be attained without—money—is far, very far, more gratifying 
than any mere consideration of literary distinction. I would 
barter all the fame of Buonaparte, if I had it, for the possession to¬ 
morrow of that more interesting object. But I am not unsolicit- 
ous to feel the influence of a higher motive still; at the same time 
I can see that I shall not probably have any great share of fame 
to barter. If the most partial of the public critics so strongly 
marks faults, what will be done by the mean, the prejudiced, the 
dull, or the spiteful ? His remarks on faults of composition are 
most pointed and discriminative. I have had myself the clearest 
perception of such things as they discriminate, in correcting for 


184 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the second edition j to which I cannot but be confident these very 
just remarks will be very much less applicable. . . . The w’hole 
of this critique has all the acuteness and fire of its author. My 
thoughts have not yet had time to concentrate into any precise 
opinion on his remarks respecting theological diction. I have a 
pure certainty as a matter of fact that what I have advanced 
respecting the effect of this diction is true, whatever qualifying 
considerations ought to accompany the statement. What is said 
about Scripture language must be unfortunate, for Hall has totally 
mistaken me. I have expressly said that ‘ the more the sacred 
oracles arc quoted, if appropriately, the better.’ What I mean, 
is a barbarous mixture of Scripture phrases into the constitution 
of the language ; not a frequent insertion of passages standing 
distinct in the page, in the same manner as I have myself intro- 
duoed them. Evidently there would be a vast difference between 
trying to weave the phrases of Milton or Shakspeare, for instance, 
into the texture of my own diction, and citing clear, distinct ex¬ 
pressions from them which should obviously appear foreign, and 
forming no part of my own mode of expression, though perti¬ 
nently, or perhaps strikingly introduced in the places where they 
stand.” 

A third edition of the Essays was published in the summer of 
1806. It contained a very few small alterations ; and the author 
tells Mrs. Mant, “ I have no idea of making any farther altera¬ 
tions or additions, in case another edition should ever be wanted. 
The third may therefore be considered as correct and perfect as 
I am able to make it.” 

In writing to Mr. Hughes (August 20, 1805), Foster says, “ I 
am now beginning an Essay on the Improvement of Time, for 
which I have thrown together a large quantity of rude materials, 
and which I foresee cannot be finished in less than a moderate 
volume. The subject suits me much, and I hope, if well, I may 
be able to finish it by the end of the year.” He appears to have 
labored upon this essay at intervals during the two following 
years, and at last to have abandoned it, in consequence of his be¬ 
coming a regular contributor to the Eclectic Review. So fully 
was he occupied in this department of literature, that upwards of 
thirteen years elapsed before he again appeared before the public 
in his own name. 

But to return to Mr. Foster’s personal history. Some time 
before his settlement at Frome, a morbid state of the thyroid 


FROME. 


185 


gland had made its appearance. It was so much aggravated by 
the exertion of speaking in public, that in May, 1805, he said, 
“ I am strongly apprehensive that a short time longer will put an 
end to my preaching, by means of a swelling of a gland of the 
neck. It began two or three years since, and has been pro¬ 
gressive in spite of every remedy.” In a letter of rather later 
date he tells Mrs. Mant, “ Every month makes me more and 
more certain that I shall preach but a very short time longer. 
The progressive complaint of my neck will, I am persuaded and 
certain, in a few months more, silence me for ever. After that 
I must depend on writing; and I am afraid it will be some time 
before I can in that way secure an income equal to that which I 
shall lose. As soon as I shall feel a tolerable certainty of this, 
I may trust to attain that social state which I so much long for. 
My prospects in this way are not those of actual despondency.” 

In a letter to Dr. Ryland, written not long before he resigned 
the pastoral office, he describes the condition and character of 
the congregation, and gives some account of his own circum¬ 
stances and prospects. “ I write to you,” he says, “ at the re¬ 
quest of the people to whom I yet venture to preach. The phy¬ 
sical cause which I have so long complained of, compels me en¬ 
tirely and finally to relinquish the work. I ought to have done 
so a considerable time since; but have been withheld by a re¬ 
luctance to lay down an office which I can take up no more. I 
may perhaps endeavor to preach three months longer, but that 
must be the utmost: and that will only be, after two or three 
weeks, once a day. 

“ The people therefore have desired me to request, in their 
name, that you will have the goodness to mention whether you 
know of any person likely to be useful in such a situation as 
this, and also likely to be willing to undertake it. They de¬ 
sire me also to state such circumstances as are requisite, of 
course, to be known respecting the situation, which they say I 
could with more propriety than they could themselves. This, 
however, involves some difficulty. I need not say that the society 
has acquired, by means of Mr. David, an unfortunate character 
among the churches ; and this, in the public estimation, can never 
be entirely reversed while it really consists of the same persons. 
The character, however, is in a great measure unjust. There 
are I believe two or three persons belonging in some sense to the 
society, who are of Mr. David’s school; but the principal of these, 


]86 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


Mr. G-, the blind man, never attends, nor ever would attend 

or long trouble any minister inclined to Calvinism. As to the 
society taken collectively, there is a total disapprobation of any¬ 
thing like an.approach to Socinianism. Some of them I believe 
are Trinitarians, in the common and simple .sense ; and .some 
are a kind of Sabellians, not materially different from Dr. Watts, 
for instance. In regard to predestinarian opinions, I believe 
Baxterian would be the most appropriate and comprehensive 
term. A very mild, moderate Calvinist would not displease 
them. At the same time no preacher would suit that was not 
rather a practical than a doctrinal preacher ; nor would a boister¬ 
ous manner be by any means acceptable. The society is ex¬ 
tremely small, and a number of the most respectable individuals 
are far advanced in years, and therefore not likely to remain a 
great while in any terrestrial society. The church is too reduced 
in number to form anything like a congregation; and to gain one 
will be a matter of great difficulty. The unfavorable theological 
reputation of the church will be one great obstacle; for people 
are afraid to join it, and serious persons are commonly most in¬ 
clined to hear where they think they could be happy to become 
members of the church. A zealous man of good sense, and 
understood to be substantially sound, might have a tolerable con- 
gregatipn, but ought not to begin reckoning on a large one. The 
people say they would greatly prefer a minister of some stand¬ 
ing to a quite young, inexperienced man.It does not seem 

nece.ssary to describe the circumstances more minutely. 

If you can suggest anything on the subject, it will be thankfully 
received by the people here, and also by me, as I cannot but be 
concerned for their welfare, having a great respect for some of 
them, and having experienced the utmost degree of kindness and 
respect among them. 

“ I received your letter, and also one from Mr. Pope. I can¬ 
not but entertain the highest respect for the [Bristol] Tract So¬ 
ciety and for its object; to which I shall be glad, if I shall find 
it in my power, to contribute. I am sincerely sorry to express 
myself in a manner so little positive, and wish I could more per¬ 
fectly avoid anything that may for a moment look like the cold 
calculation of selfishness. But my circumstances are changed ; 
writing will become, in a few months, my sole resource for sub¬ 
sistence ; it is an employment in which, as yet, I am inconceiva¬ 
bly slow, and have even had experience enough to be certain 





FROME. 


187 


that I shall always be so. I am entering on a plan of systematic 
cal reading besides, as necessary to an author, and which will 
occupy much of my time; and on the whole I am not yet cer¬ 
tain that I shall be able to produce works, or to gain wages, be¬ 
yond the indispensable claims of self-interest. I really am ex¬ 
tremely mortified to answer in such a manner to a request which 
has the best kind of usefulness for its object. If I were not so 
slow—beyond all comparison slow—even when I make my utmost 
efforts in the business of composition, the case would be different. 
But this is really the case; and you would be surprised, if I 
were to tell you, what a length of time and labor it cost me to 
write any given part of the small volumes already printed; or 
if I were to tell you how many months have been consumed in 
the mere revision and correction of those volumes for a second 
edition. 

“ What I may hereafter write will be directly or indirectly 
subservient to the best cause ; and if I find that I can but suf¬ 
ficiently make out in the way of trade, I shall be very glad to 
meet next the claims of Christian benevolence. How the trade 
is likely to serve I shall partly be able to judge in a short time, 
the second edition of the Essays being within about a week of 
coming from the press. When you see Mr. Pope, will you, my 
dear sir, tell him with what a cordial promptitude I could wish to 
answer his application, and how much I wish I could have stated 
the circumstances of my present studies in terms less liable to 
the charge of cold self-interest. 

“ 1 rejoice to hear that your health continues, and that your 
labors are prosperous. I read with pleasure your sermon on the 
death of Mr. Sharp. May you still proceed in your various and 
important work with the animation both of present success and 

of the final hopes.1 suppose Mr. flail is now in Bristol. 

Does he ever intend to write anything? He will have been one 
of the greatest sinners of his time if he do not.” 

Mr. Foster resigned his ministerial charge at Midsummer, 
1806. The greater part of the ensuing four months was spent 
at Battersea and Margate. “ A preacher instead of me,” he 
says,* “ is now settled at Frome. I was very sorry, on various 
accounts, to surrender the situation, but I found myself compelled 
to do so. Since ceasing to preach the complaint is become much 
less troublesome; indeed it is hardly so at all, but I certainly 

* To Mrs. Mant, Oct. 7, 1806. 



188 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


believe I should soon feel just in the same way again if I were 
again regularly to preach. The cause is not at all removed j 
though the pain has ceased with the discontinuance of the exer¬ 
cise, the swelling is not in the smallest degree lessened.” 

On liis return to Frome he applied with great assiduity to his 
new literary engagement. His first critical essay was a review 
of “ Carr’s Stranger in Ireland,” which appeared in the Eclectic 
for November and December, 1806. The reviewer possessed 
the advantage of having witnessed many of the scenes described, 
and of having observed with benevolent interest the condition and 
character of the people. 

“ It will be obvious,” he remarks, “ to the readers of this volume, that 
the Irish people have a national character widely different from that of 
the English. And it will be the utmost want of candor, we think, to 
deny that they are equal to any nation on the earth, in point of both 
physical and intellectual capability. A liberal system of government, 
and a high state of mental cultivation, would make them the Athenians 
of the British empire. By what mystery of iniquity or infatuation of 
policy has it come to pass, that they have been doomed to unalterable 
ignorance, poverty, and misery, and reminded one age after another of 
their dependence on a Protestant power, sometimes by disdainful neglect, 
and sometimes by the infliction of plagues. The temper of our traveller 
is totally the reverse of anything like querulousness or faction; but he 
occasionally avows, both in sorrow and in anger, the irresistible impres¬ 
sions made by what he witnessed, on an honest, and we believe we may 
say, generous mind. He clearly sees that the lower order of the people, 
whatever might be their disposition, have in the present state of things 
absolutely no power to redeem themselves from tlieir deplorable degra¬ 
dation. Without some great and as yet unattempted and perhaps unpro¬ 
jected plan for the relief of their pressing physical wants, they may 
remain another century in a situation which a Christian and a philan¬ 
thropist cannot contemplate without a grief approaching to horror, 
Their popery and their vice will be alleged against them ; if the punish¬ 
ment is to be, that they shall be left in that condition wherein they will 
inevitably continue popish and vicious still, their fate is indeed mournful, 

vengeance would hardly prompt a severer retribution.It is not 

by tempting the conscience of the papist with a pitiful sum of money, 
nor by forcibly interrupting the follies of his public worship, nor by mak¬ 
ing him, for the sake of his religion, the subject of continual derision, 
nor by unnecessarily excluding him from any advantage, that we could 
wish to see genuine Christianity aided, in its warfare against that 
wretched paganism into which what was once religion is found degene¬ 
rated among all very ignorant papists in every country. We cannot but 
regret that both the civil and ecclesiastical rulers of Ireland should have 


CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ECLECTIC REVIEW. 


189 


been for the most part unacquainted with all apostolical methods of 
attempting the conversion of the Catholics. And it is melancholy that 
the generality of the ostensible ministers of religion at present in that 
country, should be so very little either disposed or qualified to promote 
this great work. We happen to know that there are some brilliant ex¬ 
ceptions to this remark; the lustre of whose character, if it cannot pre¬ 
vail to any distance, yet defines and exposes the obscurity which sur¬ 
rounds them.” 

In conclusion, he observes :— 

“ A number of pages are occupied with passages from Mr. Grattan’s 
speeches ; some of which extracts we believe were supplied to Mr. Carr 
from memory, and therefore are probably given imperfectly. On the, 
whole, however, these passages tend to confirm the general idea enter¬ 
tained of Mr. Grattan’s eloquence, as distinguished by fire, sublimity, 
and an immense reach of thought. A following chapter is chiefly com¬ 
posed of similar extracts from Mr. Curran’s speeches, in most of which 
the conceptions are expressed with more lucidness and precision than in 
the passages from Grattan. These specimens did not surprise, though 
they delighted us. We have long considered this distinguished coun¬ 
sellor as possessed of a higher genius than any one in his profession 
within the British empire. The most obvious difference between these 
two great orators is, that Curran is more versatile, rising often to sub¬ 
limity, and often descending to pleasantry, and even drollery; whereas 
Grattan is always grave and austere. They both possess that order of 
intellectual powers, of which the limits cannot be assigned. No con¬ 
ception could be so brilliant and original that we should confidently pro¬ 
nounce that neither of these men could have uttered it. We regret to 
imagine how many admirable thoughts which such men must have ex¬ 
pressed, in the lapse of many years, have been unrecorded and lost for 
ever. We think of them with the same feelings with which we have 
often read of the beautiful or sublime occasional phenomena of nature, 
in past times or remote regions, which amazed and delighted the behold¬ 
ers, but which we were destined never to see.”* 

In the following year (1807) he contributed thirteen articles to 
the same journal. He was now entirely dependent on his literary 
exertions, and necessitated to defer that domestic union of which 
he indulged brighter anticipations than either the habitual pen- 
siveness of his mind, or the results of his observation, might have 
been supposed to permit. The event, however, amply justified 
his prognostications. “ Though sufficiently old and reflective, 

* Vide Contributions, Biographical, Literary and Philosophical, to the 
Eclectic Review. Vol. i., pp. 8, 9, 11, 17, IS. 


190 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


he says, “ not to be desperately romantic, I do indulge anticipa¬ 
tions of a much more Elysian character that it would be philosophic 
to avow. In as sober a judgment as I can form, there are more 
points of congeniality than in any instance I have ever seen ; and 
some of them, by being of a high and unusual order, will produce 
a sympathy of so much richer quality, and more vivid emphasis.”* 
To his friend at Chichester he writes, “ I am still all alone; and 
since I wrote to you have lived a more solitary life than ever in 
my life before. This last six months' I have lived a little way 
out of the town, in a house amidst the fields—into which fields, 
however, 1 hardly ever go, because I can see them so well through 
my window, the window of an upper room. I hardly ever what 
can be called take a walk, except merely in the garden adjoining 
the house. The beauties of nature are brought so directly under 
my eyes and to my feet, that I am rarely prompted to go in quest 
of them, even as far as from your house to the top of Wick Lane. 
Excepting my journey to Bristol, I have hardly ever taken a good 
long walk for the last nine months. If this rigid limitation were 
imposed upon me by some external authority, by the will of some¬ 
body else than myself, what a wretched prisoner I should think 
myself, and should watch day and night for an opportunity to 
make my escape. I almost decline all visiting, and have not 
dined from home, I believe, six times these last seven months. 
The family consists only of a worthy man and his worthy wife, 
with a little servant girl, and with them I pass only the time 
necessary for meals. You will wonder, I suppose, that I have 
not acquired one constant companion,—and you may wonder— 
but so it is, however. It is not that I do not sometimes feel this 
complete solitude oppressive, though indeed I have constant busi¬ 
ness on my hands, which does not allow much of my day-time to 
be spent in tedious vacancy. I am become, from necessity per- 
haps, more than any other cause, more diligent than when you 
knew me. Having ceased to preach, I have not a penny but 
what is gained by hard work. A large share of my work, since 
I wrote to you last, has consisted in reviewing books, which I 
have found a very laborious business, but also highly improving. 
.... Perhaps I mentioned a book about the Improvement of Time 
that I began to write a good while since; this is still far enough 
from being finished, but it must, if possible, in four or five months 


* To Mr. Hughes, Oct. 24, 1807. 


MARRIAGE. 


191 


more. When it is printed I shall not fail to have a copy sent to 
you. I am very glad the other book I sent you afforded you any 
pleasure. With the public it has been much more successful 
than I had ever ventured to expect. This solitude, however, 
which is at present my lot, is not likely to last very long. A 
house is at length taken for me and my intended companion at 
Bourton, the village in the upper part of Gloucestershire, where 
she lives. But it cannot be quitted by the present occupant till 
next Christmas^, and then the getting of furniture, and the making 
of some slight repairs, will occupy at least a month, and therefore 
defer so long the expected union. It is only within a short time past 
that we have had the slightest idea of being at Bourton, and I was 
looking out for a house in this neighborhood, though with little 
hope of finding just such a one as I wanted. A suitable house 
offering at Bourton, and M.’s mother and sisters wishing us to live 
there, I with pleasure acceded to the plan. I am particularly 
glad of it for her sake, for she would have come here (to Frome) 

a perfect stranger to every individual.Not that we shall 

want, or seek, or choose much society, but a very few female 
friends are desirable for a woman, and there are none she loves 
so much as her sisters. I, too, have always liked them most 
cordially. And I like the village, which is in a pretty situation, 
and inhabited, for the most part, by a decent, good kind of people. 
Next week I am going there, but only to stay about a week. It 
will be indispensable, I believe, for me to make another visit also, 
and return, before I go to remain there, and be made happy. 
Thus you see, after long, long waiting, my prospects with regard 
to this subject are converging to a point, and that point compara¬ 
tively not very distant, if no unforeseen prevention shall interfere 
to blast them, or protract their accomplishment. I certainly 
anticipate very much felicity, but I do not forget that I am in a 
world where a great deal of evil and sorrow must, absolutely 
must, by the appointment of the wise Creator, and by the very 
nature of things, mingle in the cup of life. I do not forget that 
' the grand essence of happiness must invariably consist in the 
enjoyment of the divine fervor and the conscious preparation 
for another life, and that the value of the other sources of felicity 
will, on the whole, depend on their being combined with this supreme 
requisite. The dear and inestimable friend to whom 1 expect 
to be united, feels this conviction not less solemnly than myself; 
and we mutually hope that the complacency of affection will be 



192 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


heightened and perpetuated by a mutual, zealous cultivation of 
piety and moral and intellectual improvement. We are thoroughly 
well acquainted with each other’s character, tastes, and habits; 
and both of us believe there is a singular, even an extraordinary 
degree of mutual adaptation, in all our views, feelings, and wishes. 
Perhaps I might have mentioned that my dear friend is about six 
years younger than myself. Two months hence I shall be 

thirty-seven years of age.Our acquaintance has now 

been as much as seven years, and our avowed connection about 
five. I regret that the union has been, though unavoidably, 
deferred to so advanced a period of life, but I never wish 1 had 
been married very young. My general health is very good. 
The state of my eyes is not worse, nor the complaint which has 
compelled me to desist from preaching.” 

About two months before his marriage, he says, “ It would be 
a foolish stoicism if I did not meet the snowdrops, and other signs 
and approaches of this spring, with a degree of interest which has 
never accompanied any former vernal equinox. I expect to leave 
this place in less than two weeks, which, however, I should not do 
so soon but for the necessity of decamping from this house, my 
host being obliged immediately to leave it. A few days will be spent 
in Bath with P., &c., and then I go forward, if all is well, to Bourton, 
to reside there perhaps a month, or perhaps more, chiefly in one 
room of the appointed habitation, before my beloved companion can 
be united to me to reside in it also. I do feel very grateful to Heaven 
for the combination of valuable things which I hope for in this 
appropriation. Her conscience, intellect, and tenderness, are the 
chief. In her society and co-operation I do indulge a sanguine 
hope of improving, in every respect, by a much more quick and 
pleasing progression than I have done in a given space during all 

these past years of gloomy solitude.For a long time, 

however, I must be at a great expense for books, of which my 
stock is miserably deficient. There are innumerable things 
incessantly which I have occasion to want to know, but have no 
means of informing myself; and this will be felt as much at 
Bourton, while we may stay there, as it is here, from its distance 
from any great mart of knowledge.”* 


To Mr. Hughes, Feb. 15, 1808. 



LETTERS. 


193 


LETTERS. 

XLVI. TO MRS. GO WING. 

Frame, Feb., 1S04. 

My dear Friend,— .... I reached here in safety, but with feel¬ 
ings very far from anything like cheerfulness. The pensiveness caused 
by leaving Downend, uniting with the consciousness of no very favora¬ 
ble prospects here, made me gloomy. I was received, as I expected, 
with kindness by the family in which I spent the time of my previous 
visit, and in which I still am, without any certainty as yet how soon or 
into what house 1 shall remove my residence. It is a respectable family, 
and each of the persons in it is very kind; one of them is the very 
superior young man that you heard me rnention ; he is to take this letter. 
There is some expectation of my lodging in the house in which Mrs. 
Rowe lived and died, in which I wish I may not be disappointed, as it is 
in a very convenient situation : if I had a little superstition, I should be 
interested in the house on her account; but I am too old to be strongly 
susceptible of a feeling of this kind. 

I probably expressed to you that no very sanguine prospects attended 
my removal hither. Nothing can be more dreary than a large lofty 
meeting-house with a very small handful of hearers, who are never likely 
to become much more numerous. Some fatal destiny seems to have 
decreed that I am not to be anywhere of much use as a public speaker, 
nor perhaps indeed in any other capacity. It required all the force that 
I felt in the reasons which induced me to leave Downend, to determine 
me to fix in a situation like this. 

I left your house with great regret, and shall always feel an animated 
pleasure in seeing you again. Your habitual and extreme kindness can 
never be lost to my memory, nor the recollection of the immense number 
of animated conversations that we have held on so many subjects. 

Some of those subjects I hope we shall discuss yet again.These 

are very gloomy times, and there is too little reason to hope for any 
speedy amendment. But no times and no successes would exempt re¬ 
flective minds from feeling a fatal deficiency in all the resources under 
the sun. It is only the anticipation of a superior state, that can save 
life in any circumstances from deserving to be called wretched. .... 


XLVII. TO MRS. MANT. 


Frame, June 20, 1804 

.... I have no expectation of finding here any friends equally inter¬ 
esting as those that I have found in former times, nor do I wish to replace 
14 





194 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the former by new ones if I could. As to that other most interesting 
person on whom so much of my happiness depends, I am yet far enough 
from having appropriated her as a domestic associate ; nor can any di¬ 
vinations within my power to use, inform me or you when such an event 
will take place. It might soon perhaps be accomplished if 1 were to 
dream of some spot where one of the great pots full of old pieces of 
gold had been hidden and lost for centuries ; and then were to go to the 
marked place in the night, and after digging several hours near the old 
tree or under the old wall, should strike at last on the crock which con¬ 
tains the dear omnipotent dust. A little of this material I want, not at 
all for the sake of satisfying any desires of vanity or pride, in the one 
individual or the other, but just for the sake of necessary use, since 
these are very bad times you know : tJiat abominable vermin called 
taxes, a far more mischievous creature than the locusts of Egypt, eating up 
every green thing, and every other thing of every other color. I do hope, 
however, that the time may not be very far distant when even in spite 
of this voracious breed, I may hope to reap a little harvest of the sweet¬ 
est kind of felicity. 

.... 1 fear you may be again the victim of that grievous head-ache, 
which will render a season of so much beauty a season of unmingled 
melancholy. I should be very glad to know, that this is not the case ; 
but that the brilliance of the morning, and the solemnity of the evening, 
the beauties of the field, and the songs of the grove, bring you their 
whole tribute of luxury, which tribute they bring only to health. If you 
are again oppressed with illness, you need other consolations than all the 
visible creation can impart! and most happily, my friend, it is not now the 
first time that you have had recourse to those superior consolations, the 
efficacy of which you have found capable of alleviating the heaviest 
griefs, and which you know it is not in vain to seek. The Being that 
gives beauty to the earth and grandeur to the sky, is well able to sus¬ 
tain those souls that are more estimable in his regard than the whole 
materiab creation. To that Being there is ready access at every mo¬ 
ment, and one short pathetic supplication to him will be of more value 
to the mind than all the rhapsodies that the enthusiasts of nature ever 
uttered, and the reveries that poets ever dreamed. If, however, you are in 
tolerable health, you are unpardonable, if you do not sometimes, as often 
as possible, regale yourself with rural sweetness. This I say wnth em¬ 
phasis, though I have myself scarcely taken a walk this month, except 

as part of a journey that I was lately obliged to make.I was 

interested and amused by some of the articles of intelligence which you 

gave me.As to that spiritless dog, John S-, I have lost all 

hope of him, if he have not by this time accomplished his business. 
Perhaps, however, I may be mistaken; he may be proceeding most 
regularly with measured steps to his purpose, having begun the under¬ 
taking on a calculation that by waiting on the lady an hour and a half 
or so, each Christmas-day, the great achievement might be accomplished 




LETTERS. 


195 


in thirty years. Patience, then, my good friend S., for tw^enty-five years 
more, and you shall be the happiest fellow in Sussex. There’s nothing 
like your steady rogues, that can follow a purpose for fifty years at a 
heat. I was something very like sorry to hear that Mr. R., notwith¬ 
standing all his merits and sacrifices, is finally excluded from the band 
of gentle warriors. Really when a worthy old man has set his heart on 
some interest, that is not absolutely bad, though it be foolish for him to 
pursue it, one is sorry when he is disappointed. I was pleased to hear 
that your old servant Dolly was married ; it looks like a kind of safety 
for the character of a wild girl. One has, however, I think seldom 
known a composition less likely to make a respectable wife than she. 
So little sense and so much caprice will be a ple.asant mess for her good 
owner, whoever it be that has caught this piece of good fortune. I won¬ 
der if she is still pretty; that very likely did the business. 


XLVIII. TO MISS MARIA SNOOKE. 
fIntroductory Letter to the Essays.’*') 

A^'ear Bristol, .August 30,1804. 

My Dear Friend,— You will accept my most sincere acknowledg¬ 
ments for the allowance you have given me. I shall prove how far I am 
sensible of its value, by the ample and frequent use I shall make of it. 

The coldness and languor incident to solitary speculation will be re¬ 
lieved by the half-social spirit supplied by the constant recollection, that 
1 am writing to a reflective friend, to whom no sentiment of importance 
can come without its interest, and from whom a little power of imagina¬ 
tion will seem to draw intermingled remarks and replies. 

My mind, I am fully conscious, cannot do justice to any subject; but yet 
it does appear extremely possible, in such a series of letters as I have 
engaged to write, to suggest many thoughts not altogether common, and 
adapted, on their correct application, to produce a considerable effect on 
taste, on character, and on happiness. 

In our many conversations while you were here, it could not fail to 
occur to us, by what a vast world of subjects for consideration we are 
surrounded. Any glance into the distance in quest of a limit, found no 
limit to the diffused and endless multitude of subjects, though it would 
soon find one to the power of investigating and understanding them. 

It appeared that all things in the creation are marked with some kind 
of characters, which attention may decipher into truth—pervaded by 
some kind of element, which thought may draw out into instruction. 
Amidst these various views it could not fail often to occur to us, how 
many exercises of the judgment are absolutely necessary to secure the 
attainments which form even a tolerably accomplished human being. In 


* Vide page 179. 



196 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


these letters I shall revive some of the subjects which engaged and 
interested the social hour, and shall perhaps recall some of the liints or 
views that then presented themselves, in order to display them with 
greater amplitude and precision. And any topics on which I have or 
have not tjiought before, will be introduced, just as my mind may be in 
the disposition to select them, or as casualty or observation may suggest 
them. 

For myself, I hope to gain by this course of writing some advantage in 
respect of intellectual discipline. A little studious labor will indeed be 
amply repaid, if it will assist to reclaim my mind from its inveterate and 
unfortunate habits of indolent, desultory, musing vagrancy, into some¬ 
thing like method in its operations, and conclusiveness in their results. 
If this reformation cannot be effected now, I may justly despair of its 
ever being possible. But I am determined not, without an effort, to sur¬ 
render my mind finally to the state of a garden wlfich produces a few 
scattered flowers, only to make one regret its being irretrievably aban¬ 
doned to weeds. 

Another advantage may be, that I shall be compelled to make, or 
rather to admit, an estimate of what has really been gained from observa¬ 
tion on a world which I have seen so long, and from the various lessons 
of experience. This Vvfill be to find, if I may express it so, the amount 
of the annual value, to the mind, of this mortal routine of rising each 
morning to view again the scenes of nature, to mingle and talk with 
various society, to transact accustomed business, to notice the occur¬ 
rences of a little, or the events of a larger sphere, to read books, to 
observe the manners and disclosures of character among persons around, 
and ever and anon to turn attention on one’s self. 

It might be presumed that much would be taught by all these diversi¬ 
ties, to an attentive and diligent spirit, formed to be the pupil of its 
situation, and not of a temper to yield either its character in obsequious 
conformity to the scene it inhabits, or its faculties to that thoughtless 
slumber which perceives none of the views that present instruction, but 
as the visions of a dream. 

My friend, to have thought far too little, we shall find among the 
capital faults in the review of life. To have in our nature a noble part 
that can think would be a cause for infinite exultation, if it actually did 
think as much and as well as it can think, and if to have an unthinking 
mind were not equivalent to having no mind at all. The mind might, 
and it should be, kept in a state of habitual exertion, that would save us 
from needing to appeal for proof of its existence to sonie occasion yester¬ 
day when we did think, or to-morrow when we shall. 

As to myself, I have often been severely mortified in considering, if all 
the short spaces of time in which I have strongly exerted my faculties 
could be ascertained, and reckoned together into one place, what a small 
part of life it would fill. The space, however, may be deemed the 
measure of the total of real life. 


LETTERS. 


197 


We can recollect, that often, while the hour has been passing, an 
internal, faintly-accusing consciousness has said, “ This is not reflection.” 
“ This is not reasoning.” “ This is vacancy.” Often, on looking back 
on a day or a week, we can mark out large portions in which life was 
of no use—in other words, was nothing worth—because the mind did 
nothing, and gained nothing ; notwithstanding that the while the pulsa¬ 
tion of the blood and all the vital functions of the animal life went on; 
notwithstanding that the dial noted the rapid hours, the sun rose and set, 
the grand volume of truth was expanded before us, and the great opera¬ 
tions of nature held their uncontrollable course. 

It was impossible not to regret that the power most made for action 
^and advance, the power apparently adapted to run a race with any orb in 
the sky, should be so immensely left behind. And it was difficult to avoid 
the folly of wishing that the soul, too, were under some grand law of 
necessitated exertion and inevitable improvement. 

I remember when once, many years ago, musing in reflective indolence, 
observing the vigorous vegetation of some shrubs and plants in spring, I 
wished that the powers of the mind too could not help growing in the 
same spontaneous manner. But this vain wish instantly gave place to 
the recollected sober conviction, that there is a simple and practicable 
process which would as certainly be followed by the high improvements 
of reason, as the vegetable luxury follows the genial warmth and 
showers of spring. If all our wishes for important acquirements had 
become efforts, my friend ! if all those spaces of time, that have been left 
free from the claims of other employment, had been spent in such a 
determined exercise of our faculties, as we recollect to have sustained at 
a few particular seasons, how much more correct, acute, ample, and rich, 
they would at this time have been! 

When the period of what is called education was past, and the impor¬ 
tant responsibility of the conduct of life devolved on ourselves, we did not 
imagine that the labors and solicitudes of mental and moral cultivation 
had accomplished all their objects, and might now be dismissed to final 
repose. How fertile in everything wise and useful would be that life, 
the early part of which should be the sole reservoir to supply opinions < 
and virtues to all the rest. 

The condition of humanity will not afford a wise and happy life on 
such terms. Life itself will go on gratuitously and without our care ; 
but all that can give value to its progress, or dignity to its close, must be 
obtained at the heavy expense of unintermitted labor. 

Judicious education anxiously displays to its pupils its own insufficiency 
and confined scope, and tells them that this whole earth can be but a 
place of tuition, till it become either a depopulated ruin, or an Elysium 
of perfect and happy heings. Its object is to qualify them for entering 
with advantage into the greater school where the whole of life is to be 
spent, and its last emphatic lesson is to enforce the necessity of an ever- 
watchful discipline, which must be imposed by each individual self, when 


198 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTEK. 


exempted from all external authority. The privileges, the hazards, and 
the accountableness of this maturity of life, and the consignment to one’s 
self, make it an interesting situation. It is to be entrusted with the care 
of a being infinitely dear, whose destiny is yet unknown, whose faculties 
are not fully expanded, whose interests we but dimly ascertain, whose 
happiness we may throw away, and whose animation we had rather 
indulge to revel than train to labor. 

There is a feeling in looking round like the first man in Eden, on a 
sphere that is my own, on which no human .authority may intrude, and 
bounded only by the laws of Him who commands the universe. What 
luxury of existence, if there were no duties, and no dangers ! 

But meanwhile the process of education is going on, even though 
unobserved, and tending fast toward the ultimate fixed form of character. 
Character grows with a force that operates every moment; it were as 
easy to check the growth of a forest. You find, that to counteract any 
one of its determined tendencies, is a task of hard and recurring labor. 
Even its slightest propensity, when opposed, seems inspirited with the 
energy of the whole. 

Habits are growing very fast; some of them may not be good; but 
they still grow while we speculate on them, and will soon close, like the 
ices from the opposite shores in the Arctic seas, except dashed by the 
interruption of a mighty force. Is the spectator unconcerned while they 
are closing around him ? Or is he descanting wisely on the laws of 
habit, till he becomes its victim ? The mind is a traitor to itself; it will 
not wait while we are seeking wise principles, nor return when we have 
found them. 

Everything is education ;—the trains of thought you are indulging 
this hour; the society in which you will spend the evening; tlie con¬ 
versations, walks, and incidents of to-morrow. And so it ought to be; 
we may thank the world for its infinite means of impression and excite¬ 
ment, which keep our faculties awake and in action, while it is our im¬ 
portant office to preside over that action, and guide it to some divine 
result. 

I wish, my dear friend, to animate both myself and you to the utmost 
zeal respecting this high concern. As the education of our youth could 
give us only some faint impressions and rude elements of wisdom,—as 
we have since found that no great and estimable improvement will spring 
unsolicited or flourish uncultivated,—and as we perceive that the world, 
and life, and time, will mould us whether we will or not, if left to their 
influence, it is supremely worth our care that we be not fatally and irre¬ 
trievably spoiled. 

There are scattered, here and there, many energetic spirits, who com¬ 
pel the world and all things in it, to pay them tribute. They deserve to 
be rich : would they could impart a small portion of their treasures ! or 
the power of acquiring them. But I have often been struck at consider¬ 
ing how entirely individual are all estimable attainments. The man into 


LETTERS. 


199 


whose house I step a quarter of an hour, or whom I meet on the road, or 
whose hand I take, and converse with him, looking in his face the while 
—he so near me, that walks with me, that traverses a field or sits in an 
arbor with me,—he may have a soul fraught with celestial fire, stores 
of science, brilliant ideas, magnanimous principles, while I—I that 
observe his countenance and hear him talk—may have nothing of all 
tliis. He may for the last ten years have been assiduous in studies day 
and night, while I have consumed the morning in sleep, and the day in 
indolent vacancy of every sentiment, except icisliing, “ which of all em¬ 
ployments is the worst.” What right have I to wish he should leave 
part of his animated and powerful character with me ? But he cannot, 
if he would. He takes his resplendent soul away, and leaves me to 
feel, that as he is individual, so, too, unfortunately, am I. The mind 
must operate within its own self, and by its own will; else, though sur¬ 
rounded by a legion of angels, it would be dark and stationary still. 

Yet, though designs and efforts must be individual, they may be social; 
and it is one of the most pleasing engagements of friendship to offer 
suggestions tending to assist such generous cares. I would not wish to 
hold a friendship that I greatly prized at less expense than this. 

I shall feel the most animated pleasure in my solitude, if in these let¬ 
ters I can assemble from the regions of reflection, or of reality, into 
which I have wandered, any sentiments which may hereafter be recol¬ 
lected by you, as having contributed to any one of your pleasures, or of 
your improvements. It is not at ail in the character of an instructor 
that I write, but as a cordial, respectful friend, certain always to find in 
the friend to whom he writes an animated rival interest in everything 
that can enlighten understanding, or conduce to felicity. 

I am, most sincerely yours, 

J. F. 


XLIX. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Frojne, March, 1805. 

My DEAR Friend — .... I was afraid to open your letter, lest some 
savage beast or serpent should dart out of it, and thought it vastly mild 
when I did venture to examine it. I wish you whatever domestic grati¬ 
fication is derivable from the addition of a son. 

.... I am glad to hear a confirmation of the account of Mr. Hall’s 
recovery. As to his writing, it does not seem more likely he will at¬ 
tempt it now than before ; it is even probable he will be rather dissuaded 
from too much of the solitude and hard study which that business re¬ 
quires ; that is to say, if other authors are at all like me. Your censures 
about the delay of my manuscript are totally misplaced ; it is true, I 
have been twice, part of a week each time, at Downend; but thus much 
you would allow that even propriety, had inclination not been a compe- 



200 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


tent inducement, would have claimed. As to the rest of the time I 
have been very industrious, but I did not know when I had finished the 
two first essays what a task I had yet on my hands. When I came to 
the fourth essay, which is much longer and more important (as far as 
the word important can apply to any of them) than the others, I found 
it requisite to write the first part of it anew, and at five times the length; 
besides, the whole business is inconceivably tedious. I have often passed 
the whole day about two or three sentences, and could only determine 
to do more to-morrow; but I could not help myself; it was no afiair of 
will. I have been so assiduous that I have hardly had one walk, except 
the journeys to Downend, for these several months ; and though I have 
been necessitated, often against my inclination, to make visits in the 
town, I have put off a number of persons from time to time with saying, 
“ Certainly, Sir, I intend myself the pleasure of calling on you very 
shortly.” Everything was wrong in these two essays ; there were 
scarcely three pardonable sentences together. This has given me a 
mingled feeling of being pleased and mortified ; mortified that the first 
operations of thought were so incorrect, but pleased that I could clearly 
see and often mend the faults. The latter essays will exhibit more of 
the work of understanding, and more of what will please or displease as 
matter of opinion. As to how soon they will be finished I am afraid to 
pledge myself, after my past experience of the utter impossibility of 
moving fast; but as I have only about half a dozen sheets to transcribe, 
with very slight corrections, I cannot be many days ; I am afraid some¬ 
what more than a week, but surely I think not two. 

I see no manner of reason why you should forswear the press. How 
many editions would you have your works go through ? By all means 
write again; that is, after you have learnt of me somewhat more sim¬ 
plicity of style. You may believe me, that I am quite worthy to be a 
model in this respect. 

.... Do you think we really shall do anything of permanence and 
of consequence before we quit this orb ? There is nothing proceeding 
in this stupid town worth notice. I lately felt high elation in looking to 
an immense distance from it, that is, at Sirius, and some others of the 
sublime spectacles, in a glass of considerable power. 

I was sorry you did not come to Bath last autumn. It is but thirteen 
miles from Frome. You would be treated very respectfully here, only 
you would be severely preached. After the preachers, who are ex¬ 
tremely respectable men, there are very few persons here in whom I can 

feel any particular interest.I should nauseate the place if I had 

been habituated to it a century. At first I felt an intense loathing ; I 
hated every house, timber, stone, and brick in the town, and almost the 
very trees, fields, and flowers, in the country round. I have, indeed, 
long since lost all attachment to this world as a locality, and shall never 
regain it. Neither, indeed, for tliis do I care; we shall soon leave it for 
ever.I now seldom comparatively think of politics ; when I do, 




LETTERS. 201 

it is with a hatred of the prevailing system, which becomes but moro 
intense by time. 


L. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Downend, March 26, 1805. 

My dear Friend,— .... It was necessary for me to come here 
this week, if I would see the person on whose account I came. I am 
very glad also for the sake of my eyes, which were become very uneasy 
by the exertion of the mind perhaps, as much as direct use. I have now 
nothing to write but unconnected notices. First, I have admitted I think 
two thirds of your corrections, a very large proportion you will allow, 

for the vanity of an author.I have made a very few corrections 

also; one very necessary and very happy one, about the beginning of the 
part referring to atheism. As the passage stood before, it connected the 
idea of Deity with place, in a manner which I had felt to disapprove be¬ 
fore, but on considering again, I felt absolutely must be altered. A con¬ 
siderable number of the modes of expression I have restored to the state 
in which they had stood before. I have erased most of the marks of quo¬ 
tation, used where I had supposed the sentiment to be expressed by some 
individual; they are ugly and foolish; and by observing lately the usage 
of a distinguished writer, I perceive them quite useless. I have erased 
also several notes of admiration which you had introduced; I hate this 
figure mortally, and prohibit most absolutely the insertion of one of them 
more than the very few which I felt indispensable. 

.... I perceive one mistake in your manner of poinling (that is, ac¬ 
cording to the standard of Gibbon, and some other of the highest author¬ 
ities). When there are several nouns of the nominative case to one 
verb, you admit no comma after the last of these previous to the verb. 
Or when there are several distinct, short members converging into- one 
concluding one, you admit no stop between the last of them and this con¬ 
cluding one. In this I am persuaded you are wrong, according to the 
dictates of reason, as well as the highest authority. Of the authority I 
am quite certain. A passage or two where you have introduced the 
correction will show you what I mean. “ New train of ideas, presenting 
the possible, and magnifying the certain, difficulties of the situation.” 
“ Though a man is obedient, and probably will continue obedient, to 
habit.” “ They are mistaken if they imagine that the influences which 
guide, or the moral principles which impel, this self-applauding pro¬ 
cess,” &c. Now I feel most certain that the comma ought to remain in 
all such cases, and that the contrary manner is a vulgar mode only of 
pointing. The authority of Gibbon is decisive, and he invariably points, 
in such instances, as I have done. 

There is another circumstance which I cannot now describe gramma¬ 
tically, but of which I sent an instance. I wrote, “ Any man, whatever 
were his original tendencies, might, by being led through a different 




202 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


train, have been now a different man from what he is.” You put it 
thus: “ Whatever his original tendencies, might, by his having been led,” 
&LC. Now in such cases, I think you will perceive, if you consider, that 
two past tenses are an incorrect mode of expression. When one past 
time is indicated, the other thing which was contemporary with the time 
indicated by that past tense was of course freseni as to that time, and 
ought therefore to be in the form used for present time. This, however, 
is not a good example. I much dislike the article an before a word be¬ 
ginning with ?j, as an universe. I do not know whether I am right in 
this, but I nauseate the full broad pronunciation of u as you. I cannot 
recollect to give account of the reasons for retaining my former mode 
of expression in places where you had modified it, but I should not have 
done it from the more vanity of retaining my own. I have excluded 
Caesar, whom you introduced among such men as “ Alfred, Timoleon,” 
&c. It was my object in that one instance to have them all men of 
virtue. I retain the appellation “ My dear friend,” at the beginning of 
the fourth letter of one of the two first essays. I meant it not as an 
address; it had then been a singularity from the beginning of the other 
letters, but merely an appellation to stand in the commencing line, and 
not above it. .... I saw your meaning in altering somewhere a simile 
about meteors, but 1 instantly recurred to the former state of the compari¬ 
son. It was indispensable to have it not formal and lengthened, but 

momentary and gone.Somewhere in the fourth essay I have 

made an assertion respecting the original of the New Testament of this 
kind, that the terms which are now in our language 'peculiarly theologi¬ 
cal, were not so, as adopted by the apostles, but that they took their 
words from the simple, general vocabulary of the language. I do not 
express it right here; but it is a distinctly expressed idea in the essay. 
Now, though I have no doubt of this being true, you know how well qua¬ 
lified I am to prove it so. If it is not true (of which you will be able to 
Judge), it can be omitted without making a violent chasm. If it is true, 
it is a remark of considerable consequence in the question I am then 
considering. I have said, “ sublimates martial into moral grandeur;” 
I do not know whether sublimate is exclusively a scientific word. I have 
used in one place, in the fourth essay, “ lustre of array,” as synonymous 
to raiment; perhaps this is wrong. ... I have not one book of reference 
about me. I have not had an English dictionary of any kind whatever 
during the whole of my revision. I had somewhere used the word partly 
in connection with “ divine grace,” or the “ divine Spirit’s transforming 
a man.” I wonder at your erasing this. Surely it is time of day to 
take care what we assert on this subject. It is impossible not to see 
that the transformation is very partial, even in the best men. I think I 
must trust to your discretion any slight correction in the two latter 
essays. The care I have used assures me they can need to be very 
small, unless it were in the ideas, and that is another thing. 





LETTERS. 


203 


LI. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Fromc, April 8, 1S05 

.... I left the correcting of the two latter essays to your discretion; 
f have since thought I should not have done this absolutely, as there are 
oiany sentences which you might be inclined to modify, on account of 
heir meaning, in a manner which I could not approve. I request you, 
herefore, if any corrections of consequence have occurred to you, to 
write them, together with the expressions as they stand independently 
of the correction, and send them to me. I am sorry for every addition 
to your trouble, but it will not take much time. You may think this one 
of the mean feelings of an author, but in the same case, yourself the 
author and I the corrector, you would have the same wish. Having a 
manuscript by me (I wish for the proof that I have been sometime labo¬ 
rious, that you could see this manuscript) I shall instantly be able to 
refer the detached expressions or sentences to their place, so as to judge 

of their connections.What should you deem to be the reasonable 

auguries as to public success ? It is an experiment of great anxiety to 
me, from my progressive apprehension that the pen will soon be my only 
resource. Unless, therefore, I am successful in this trial, my prospects 
of life are turning again into darkness. 

I am completely satisfied with myself as to the laborious care which I 
have employed. I fully feel that unless this volume be written well, I 
cannot write well. But, indeed, I am also certain that in many respects 
it is written well. 

I am very glad, not that indolence has so long kept me from being an 
author, but glad of the fact of having not become an author sooner. A 
more advantageous impression will be made by the first production of so 
mature a character, than I should probably have made by a progressive 
improvement to the present intellectual pitch from such an inferior com¬ 
mencement as I should have made, even six or seven years since. I am 
gratified in feeling that my mind was reserved, either in consequence 
of something in its essential constitution, or from the defectiveness of its 
early discipline, for a late—a very late maturity. It is yet progressive; 
if I shall live six or ten years, and can compel myself to a rigorous, 
especially if to a scientific, discipline, I am certain it will think much 
better then than it does now ; though in the faculty of invention it has 
probably almost reached its limit. 

My total want of all knowledge of intellectual philosophy, and of all 
metaphysical reading, I exceedingly deplore. Whatever of this kind 
appears in these letters is from my own observation and reflection, much 
more than from any other resource. But everything belonging to ab¬ 
straction has cost me inconceivable labor; and many passages which 
even now may appear not very perspicuous, or not, perhaps, even true, 
are the fourth or fifth labored form of the ideas. I like my mind for its 
necessity of seeking the abstraction of every subject; but, at the same 


204 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


time, this is, without more knowledge and discipline, extremely incon¬ 
venient, and sometimes the work is done very awkwardly or erroneously. 
How little a reader can do justice to the labors of an author, unless 
himself also were an author! How often I have spent the whole day 
in adjusting two or three sentences amidst a perplexity about niceties, 
which would be far too impalpable to be even comprehended, if one were 
to state them, by the greatest number of readers. Neither is the reader 
aware how often, after this has been done, the sentences or paragraphs 
so adjusted were, after several hours’ deliberation the next day, all 
blotted out. The labor of months lies in this discarded state in the 
manuscripts, which I shall burn when I know that the volume is all 
printed. Less of this kind of loss, however, would be sustained in 
making another volume; the long revision which I have now finished 
having given me a most excellent set of lessons on composition, in con¬ 
sequence of which I should much better execute the first writing, in the 
case of producing other works. You will forgive this egotism; none 
of it appears in the book. 

I must protest against all alteration of words, on account only of their 
being of similar sound to words in their vicinity, except in the case of a 
very apparent inadvertency. This is a very puerile kind of objection 
and criticism. 


Lit. TO THE REV. JOSEPPI HUGHES. 

Frame, April 20, and May 8, 1805. 
.... I have said, “ Again, what is the value of all interesting moral 
books, but as instructing you in the true doctrine of happiness ?” You 
would say, “ Wherein consists the value of all interesting moral books, 
but in their capacity to instruct you ?” (Sic. Both of us bad. “ Where¬ 
in,” is one of that class of adverbial compounds which is discarded by 
every elegant pen, and expressly condemned by Blair (there are whereby, 
whereof, whereto, thereof, &c.) ; I am not aware that I have admitted one 
of this class throughout the essays. “ Consists^ It is one of my laws 
of composition always to prefer the simple verbs, is, does, makes, &.c.,to 
any more formal words, when they will express the sense as well; and 
this is one of the chief secrets of simple writing. “ Capacity f is not 
the word ; capacity belongs more to a conscious agent. I have spent 
and wasted several hours on this insignificant sentence. There is no 
need of anything about “ value.” Write simply “ again, moral writings 
are instructions on the subject of happiness. Now the doctrine of this 
subject is declared,” &c. The plainest simplicity is always necessary 
in a sentence which proposes a topic. ’ 

I have said, “ Your recollections will tell you that they have most cer¬ 
tainly presumed to avow, or to insinuate, a doctrine of happiness which 
implies the Christian doctrine to be a needless intruder on our specula- 



LETTERS. 


205 


tions,” &c. You question the authority of implies with an infinitive 
mood after it. Since it is grammatically correct, and a very neat, quick 
way of getting out the meaning, I should venture it if there were no 
authority. But there is authority. I probably never use it in this man¬ 
ner without either a distinct recollection, or a kind of faint echo, of a 
sentence in a long printed speech, in my possession, of Fox; a speech 
to which Mr. Favell told me, that Horne Tooke said, he had hardly deemed 
even Fox to be equal. “ Excellent illustration ! Why, in such a case 
we should all have said the same thing; but what stupidity it is to imply 
this to he such a case /” (It is not a neivspaper speech.) 

.... I have written, “ And what appears in these illustrations, as 
the highest form* of happiness ? It is probably that of a man feeling 
an elevated complacency in his own excellence, a proud consciousness 
of rectitude,” &c. I have attentively considered this sentence, and do 
not approve any alteration in it; it expresses just what I wanted to ex¬ 
press. I can by no means approve making the form or kind of happi¬ 
ness, to be the man himself wdio possesses it; nor the introduction of the 
word “ cherishing,” or atny word, before the expression, a proud con¬ 
sciousness of rectitude,” so as to separate this from the preceding ex¬ 
pression, “ an elevated complacency in his own excellence;” it would 
be absurd to describe these as two distinct circumstances of the man’s 
feelings. The latter is but a varied expression, an aggravation, an ex¬ 
planation, or whatever you please, of the former. The propriety of 
admitting this sort of repetition is supported by numberless examples in 
Johnson and many others ; particularly Hall abounds with them. The 
sentence would be more absolutely correct thus; “ It is probably tlie 
state of mind of a man feeling,” &c. But this would be unpardonably 
clumsy, and the point of correctness is here of trivial importance. 

I have said, “ To shade from sight that vista which opens into the dis¬ 
tance of eternity.” Incorrect; as it would seem to say that the termi¬ 
nation of the vista is actually in the scene of the distance. It will be 
perfectly, or sufficiently, correct, to say, “ opens to the distance of eter¬ 
nity.” The expression, “ the distance,” as used by an artist, does not 
mean the measure of space from this point to some distant one, but the 
scene or region which is distant. “ Vastness ” has nothing to do with 
my meaning; nor could “ vastness ” be seen through a vista. “ Distant 
eternity ” will not do, because distance is the chief thing I have‘in view, 
as opposed to the confinement of all our attention to immediate objects. 
“ Better country, the heavenly,” expresses no idea of distance ; has been 
used not many pages before, and would here be a very heavy, lazy, far¬ 
fetched, broken, ending of the sentence ; “ opens to the distance of eter¬ 
nity,” will, when connected with vista, instantaneously and simply give 
the right idea to every mind. 

.... I have said, “ Have not the most enlightened and devout Chris- 


* “ Brightest image,” 9th edition. 


206 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


tians, meeting death in their chambers, and the men who have publicly 
died for the best cause,” &c. You say, “ Have not the most enlightened 
and devout Christians, whether they have languished in their chambers, 
or have been consumed at the stake, disclosed their elevation ?” and very 
much better, if this stake, a most odious word every way, and never to 
be tolerated except in narrative, could be got out. I would infinitely 
rather be a little rhetorical and say, “ whether they have languished in 
their chambers, or passed through the fire of martyrdom, disclosed,” &lc. 
Indeed consumed is too passive a word ; the expression should be one 
that indicates agency on the part of the glorious victim. I think it is 
the best as I have now expressed it. 

. . . . “ This number is small indeed compared with, &c., but it is 
large enough to occupy the mind, and enable it to spare the heroes whose 
fierce brilliance,” &c. 

Obscure as you say. My meaning is, that this select number has the 
effect of standing representative of the heathen character, and to retain 
the mind’s devotion to it, notwithstanding so many of the great heathen 
were bad. It inflicts a feeling of misery to be employed three or four 
hours, as I have in this case been, about correcting a despicable sen¬ 
tence. I never had in my life a more perfect feeling than at this mo¬ 
ment, of having labored to think till I cannot form one single idea. I 
seem to have no more mind than the inkstand. 

.... I will endeavor to introduce one line of a note somewhere, ac¬ 
cording to your suggestion, to parry the imputation of consigning all 
heathens to destruction. . . . 

I do not think any good can be done in the way of mottoes. It is such 
mere chance to find or recollect anything peculiarly apposite, and when 
it is not peculiarly so, one is always inclined to say, “ Why could not the 
man have been quiet ?” How often I have said this in reading mottoes. 
Any motto for the whole work, and therefore for the title-page, is out of 
the question, for volumes comprising a number of unconnected subjects ; 
and one for a single separate essay looks very like poverty, unless there 
were one for each, which would be quite a desperate thing. The passage 
from Romans, for the fourth essay, would be too strong and rugged for 
an introductory sentiment. Nothing can be done ; what is general can¬ 
not be particular, and is therefore of no value ; what is particular cannot 
be general, and therefore cannot be applicable to the whole work. Be¬ 
sides, a motto in English alone would seem totally to forswear the 
scholar ; and a motto in Latin would not be of a piece with that total 
exclusion of Latinisms which I felt necessary to preserve throughout the 
letters, because it will be known, by a number of the readers, that they 
were addressed to a female. ... I am very unwilling to diminish the 
applause of Milton. The short notice of him in the last letter gives no 
proper place for a general estimate of his merits, and in that particular 
respect in which I have cited him, the applause is correct; he is evan¬ 
gelical far beyond every poet of consequence besides, except those whose 



LETTERS. 


207 


names I have mentioned after him. If you think it very necessary, I will 
write a short note to say, that I do not mistake him actually for Raphael 
or Gabriel. I deem a page or two, about where his name is connected 
with that of Pascal, the best in the volumes. 

.... All my considerations about language have resulted in an 
aversion to the formal, squared, built style, of which I observe many 
instances of the present time, so different from the easy and admirable 
style of Bolingbroke. 

.... The style of your predictions certainly raises the pitch of mine; 
yet I can by no means be so sanguine as to expect the speedy sale of a 
thousand copies, or the speedy call for a second edition. For one thing, 
no review will praise me, whether it were conducted by orthodox divines, 
by Socinians, or by Deists. No man might more justly appropriate the 
hackneyed motto, ^^Nullius jurare magistri ^''—but the consequence will 
be, that no magister will approve or befriend me. 


LIII. TO MRS. MANT. 

Frotne, April 25, 1805. 

.... I had not heard of Mr. ——’s death before I received your letter. 
I felt a very pensive sentiment, while I so easily and so vividly recalled 
my interviews and conversations with him. I seemed to see and hear 
him as distinctly, as when I used to sit or walk with him. I really had 
a great esteem for him ; but yet, my dear friend, we perfectly know, that 
his character was an extremely defective one, even since his becoming a 
Christian professor, not to go so far back as his juvenile history. Alas ! 
my dear friend, how few are the persons that display the full consistent 

nobleness of the Christian character. In spite, however, of Mr.-’s 

striking faults, I retained such an impression of his uniform, friendly 
attention to me, and of his ample knowledge, from which I gained much 
and various information which will be always useful to me, that I did 
feel a greater impression from the information of his death, than I had 
felt on account of any removal for a long time before, and more than I 
should from hearing of the death of any person in Chichester except 
one, and that one is R. Mant. 

.... How very far you are from envying the frivolous taste, or the 
mean selfishness and spite, which have been the causes of your having 
so little intimacy, and partly losing the degree that you once had with 

-. How infinitely preferable it is for you to go alone, than to go 

their way for the sake of company, especially while you can have at any 
hour, and every hour, the company of the greatest Power and the best 
Friend in the universe. All company will be insipid to a thoughtful 
mind if it is deprived of this ; if it enjoy mis habitually, it will be in a very 
great degree independent of all other. I say, in a great degree, for we have 
all felt, how desirable is agreeable human society, and have been glad 



208 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


when we have had easy access to it. To become quite independent of it 
is such an attainment that even I, who have many dispositions tending 
to solitude, and those dispositions confirmed by habit, have not yet quite 
reached such a state of mind. If I could fully have had my will, how¬ 
ever, I should, since I came to this place, have been very much of a 
recluse. And, indeed, on the whole, I have been so. Long spaces of 
time during the last months have been passed in a more solitary manner 
than any former part of my life ; and I have deemed it a piece of good 
fortune when 1 have passed a number of days without going out of the 
liouse, and without any one calling on me. Indeed I am very seldom 
called on, for I never invite any one, except two sisters of great worth in 
this town, and they have only called once. The time that I spend with 
the family in whose house I lodge is extremely little. I systematically 
make it as little as possible, because I have my own affairs. I have been 
a rather assiduous student since I came into this house ; though still 
there is great room to mend. It is most melancholy to review my life, 
and see the habitual indolence which has made it barren. 

.... What are the feelings with which you meet another spring ? 
Are you still as insulated from acquaintance ? Do you continue to enjoy 
the consolations of religion ? I have no doubt, you still feel the same 
detachment, happy detachment I may most justly call it, from an anxious 
love of life. Think, my dear friend, what a noble point of superiority 
this is to the state of the persons around you, however gay, young, or pros¬ 
perous, who yet would feel horror-struck at the idea of death. Let this 
great concern of being ready, habitually ready for death, be our foremost 
every day and every hour, and then life may take its chance. How little 
has he to fear, who does not fear to die ! Be this, then, always the first 
and foremost, and then let the other matters come as they may, or as they 
please. I say, let them come as they may; and I say this with a much 
better grace than if all were gay and prosperous in my own life and 
prospects ; but I was born with an unchangeable tendency to melancholy, 
and shall probably never want actual causes for it. As for instance, 
though my eyes have for the last year and more been more easy and 
sound than several years before, yet the infallible symptoms that they 
will at length be darkened, gradually and steadily, and of late more per¬ 
ceptibly increase. Before I left Chichester a slight streak began to pass 
before them. This cloud has been increasing in size ever since, and by 
enlarging still a few years more, will bring on a total eclipse. It is en¬ 
tirely beyond the reach of any medical application. I have this darkness, 
therefore, fully in prospect. Again, two or three years since the gland in 
front of my neck began to swell; it has continued to swell in spite of 
every remedy, and very rapidly since I came to this town, in consequence 
of the greater effort necessary to speak within wide walls ; if during a 
few months more I find it still increase, it will be absolutely necessary to 
give over preaching, and that for ever; for every professional man agrees 
that the complaint cannot, in a person of my age, be cured; all that can 


LETTERS. 


209 


be done will be to endeavor to check its progress, and I have now scarcely 
any hope that this can be done while I continue to preach. I have there¬ 
fore the expectation, that not long hence, I must lose this mean of doing 
some little good, and this source of support. As to my matrimonial 
hopes, if this threatened event take place, those hopes are deferred in- 
delinitely, and perhaps forever; unless the business of authorship should 

prove more lucrative than I have any clear right to expect.Thus 

you see, I make out some right to talk to you in the strain of consolation. 
I say to you again. Let us live for God and eternity, and then let Time 
do as it pleases. But yet, even as to time, with all its evils, if we are 
really the servants of the Almighty, he will make all things work to¬ 
gether for our good, and we shall one day thank him with emotions of 
rapture for all the pains which he has mingled in our lot. 


LIV. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

Frame^ May 23, 1805. 

My dear Friend,— It is altogether in vain to attempt any excuse for 
answering a letter from a friend fifteen or sixteen months after it was 
received. I can only wish that the condemnation may fall on the right 
point of the character, and that excessive indolence, or anything else, 
may be imputed, rather than the want of a sincere and ever-constant re¬ 
gard. I own it rests simply on my assertion that this has not been the 
cause of my long silence, which would in no part of the world be deemed 
a proof of friendship. But I have my own consciousness that the per¬ 
manence of friendly regard depends in my mind on the estimates of my 
judgment, and that you hold the same place in my judgment now, when 
the delusions of youth are passed away. The valued associate of some 
of the most interesting years of my life will be very often recalled to 
thought and affection, even to its latest periods. And I trust that both 
our lives, through whatever scenes they may separately pass, will be 
distinguished by that piety which will conduct them to close in the 
same point,—an entrance into the kingdom of social and eternal felicity. 
It appears to me a very long time since our walks and conversation at 
Brearley; the memory however of that period is still extremely vivid, 
and I am persuaded will always remain so. How many particular mo¬ 
ments, places, incidents, and dialogues, I could recount. If I were with 
you I should feel it very interesting to spend a few hours in comparing 
our recollections, especially in a visit to the very places to which those 
recollections would refer. It is not improbable that I, though my 
memory is a very defective one, should have the stronger traces of those 
conversations and incidents, from this cause, that a person who leaves 
a place, and who has consequently no later associations with it to ob¬ 
literate the earlier ones, looks back through a clearer medium, so to 
fBpeak, to a former period, and to the circumstances of the place where 





210 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


he then lived. In that direction of his thoughts nothing seems to stand 
between him and the distant object. You, on the contrary, have passed 
through a long series of events and social communications in the same 
neighborhood, and these would be found to occupy and crowd the latter 
part of your retrospect so much, as probably to render the remoter cir¬ 
cumstances much less distinct. I wonder which of us feels to have 
undergone the greater change by the course of time. It seems to me 
hardly possible that you should more emphatically feel yourself a diffe¬ 
rent person from what you were twelve or fourteen years since, than I 
do. And yet one great circumstance in your situation which is not in 
mine, your domestic relation, would seem sufficient of itself to change 
almost the whole economy of feeling. In this great article 1 find it 
quite impossible to imagine to myself the nature of the new order of 
sentiments, and the manner in which they must take place of what was 
the general habit of feeling before. I can, however, very easily con¬ 
ceive your tender relations to form an estimable source of happiness, on 
which I can cordially congratulate you, while I think of you as passing 
your life habitually with a friend who loves you, and whom you love, 
and surrounded by a number of rising beings (how many ?) in whom 
you are destined to take a most affectionate interest to the last moment 
of your life. How far does your happiness, with the aid of these in¬ 
terests, exceed what you can imagine it possible to have attained without 
them ? May 1 suppose that you are twice as happy as you could have 
been in the insulated state to which I am still condemned ? But even 
a lower supposition than this will give me cause to commiserate my 
own destiny, thus far. When that destiny may change is beyond even 
conjecture. My situation in this respect would be altered in a very short 
time, if worldly circumstances gave me any prospect of competence; 
but slender and precarious means, in times like the present, doom a 
man to bear his solitude as well as he can. I have a thousand times 
felt a vain regret on this subject, not only on account of being precluded 
from one of the capital means of felicity, and even of improvement, but 
also on account of the effect which I can perceive this exclusion to have 
on my character. It assists a very strong tendency which I feel to 
misanthropy. 

I have long been taught and compelled by observation to form a very 
bad opinion of mankind ; this conviction is irresistible ; but at the same 
time I am aware of the Christian duty of cultivating a benevolence as 
ardent as if the contrary estimate of human character were true. I 
feel it most difficult to preserve anything like this benevolence ; my mind 
recoils from human beings, excepting a very few, into a cold, interior 
retirement, where it feels as if dissociated from the whole creation. I 
do not, however, in any degree approve this tendency, and I earnestly 
wish and pray for more of the spirit of the Saviour of the world. 

Of my studies I cannot give you any account. As far as I have 
attended to anything which could at all deserve that name, it has been 


LETTERS. 


211 


in the most desultory manner imaginable. I have never yet succeeded 
in forming or adhering to any kind of plan or system. For many years 
past I have read comparatively but little,—a neglect which I feel daily 
and hourly cause to regret, and which very lately I have begun in some 
degree to remedy, or rather to reform. Observation of facts and of the 
living w'orld, has perhaps, on some subjects, given me the feeling of 
having better materials for forming opinions than books could supply; 
but on very many of the greatest subjects books must be the principal 
instructors. I often mix together in the most confused manner the read¬ 
ing of books of quite opposite quality. As for instance, 1 lately read at 
the same time. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, and Baxter’s Account of his 
own Life and Times. The work of Gibbon excites my utmost admira¬ 
tion ; not so much by the immense learning and industry which it dis¬ 
plays, as by the commanding intellect, the keen sagacity, apparent in 
almost every page. The admiration ofihis ability extends even to his 
manner of showing his hatred of Christianity, which is exquisitely subtle 
and acute, and adapted to do very great mischief, even where there is 
not the smallest avowal of hostility. It is to be deplored that a great 
part of the early history of the Christian church was exactly such as a 
man like him could have wished. There is no doubt that in his hands. 
Fathers, Councils, and the ancient contests and mutual persecutions 
of Christian parties, take their worst form; but after every allowance 
for this historian’s malignity, it is impossible not to contemplate , with 
disgust and reprobation a great part of what the Christian world has 
been accustomed to revere. 

I have lately begun to read the works of Charles Leslie. Happening 
to see the old volumes in the library of an acquaintance, I recollected the 
very strong manner in which Br. Johnson once spoke of this writer. I 
intend to read a large proportion of him with the most careful attention. 
From what I have seen thus far, I doubt if there be in our language a 
theological writer of greater talents in the field of argument. I am gra¬ 
tified in the extreme degree by his most decisive reasonings against the 
Deists. A great part of his work seems to be against the Deists, Soci- 
nians, and Jews. Some of them are in defence of the established church, 
which of course it is now very needless to read. He was very fierce 
against dissenters. 

Your life, I have been informed, is most completely filled with employ¬ 
ment, and I rejoice that the employment will be of high utility. 

I hope the consciousness of this utility and, I may add, the temporal ad¬ 
vantage will alleviate, and in some imperfect [degree reward] the toil. 

For the supreme reward you must wait till another period.I 

would express to your father in the strongest terms, the grateful [sense] 
which I shall never lose, of the advantages I derived from being his 
pupil. Each review of the progress of my mind (as far as I may be 
allowed to regard that progress as a course of improvement) recalls him 
to my memory as a wise and friendly preceptor, of whom I shall never 
cease to think with affection and veneration. 




212 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


I am ashamed to revert to the old subject of authorship. It seems 
you had heard more than a year since, that I was going to print a num¬ 
ber of essays. I supposed so myself, as I had written enough at that 
time for a moderate volume. But on consideration I felt, that one 
very long essay (on the subject of the Metropolis) would not be exactly 
the thing to appear in a first publication. I had therefore a good deal 
more to write to make a reasonable quantity; and when I began the cri¬ 
tical revision (now as much as eight or nine months since) of the whole 
mass, I was confounded at the crudeness, feebleness, or inelegance, that 
met my sight in every page, and almost every paragraph. The revision 
and correction cost me, I really believe, as much labor as the whole pre¬ 
vious composition, though composition is a task in which I am miserably 
slow. At length two volumes, 12mo., are nearly through the press, and 
would have been finished some time since, but for a general refusal of the 

printers to work without higher wages.lam not very sanguine 

of success; for one thing, because there are other reasons than those of 
pure criticism, why no review will probably praise me. If I should be 
successful, and if I become disabled for personal public services, I shall 

devote myself entirely to the business of writing.The person to 

whom the letters which make the essays, were addressed, is the female 
friend to whom my affections are irrevocably devoted. 


LV. TO MRS. GOWING. 


Frame, August, 1805 

My dear Friend, —. ... I have numberless times wished to hear 
about you, and should have solicited you to write, but from knowing how 
much you dislike the task. I expected to have seen you before this time, 
and am amazed to think, that almost four months have elapsed since my 
last visit. How have you been, and what have you been doing since then ? 
How strange it feels to me, that I who have lived years in your house 
and daily society, should not now be certain, whether you are in health, 
whether you have any determinate plans, whether the girls are with you, 
whether you are reconciled, for the time, to your house, and all the other 
things which I used so lately to know habitually, and which it would be 
at this moment an animated pleasure, or at least interest (for it would 
partly depend for being pleasure or not, on your being happy or not), to 
be able to learn. My dear friend, I feel that time does not at all lessen 
my regard for you; in every instance, in my past experience, I have 
found a very little time of absence and distance from those with whom I 
had associated to be a very complete test of the kind and degree of my 
interest in them ; if that interest has been slight, and caused merely by 
having associated with them, I have always found it sink away after a 
very short time ; much less than a year’s absence would annihilate it. 
But I retain for you as cordial a friendship as on the pensive day that T 





LETTERS. 


213 


left your house. Believe me, my excellent friend, you are, and always 
will be dear to me. I would ask twenty questions about you, and your 
family, and your course of life, but that I cannot know for asking. But 
why will you not let me know ? Surely it would not be so very severe 
a grievance for once to write part of a sheet. Surely you know, that I 
do not mind about letters not being written And you do me extreme 
injustice if you do not believe,'that any intelligence from you would be 

most welcome.I rather expect to see your neighborhood before 

the end of next month. My mode of life is much the same, month after 
month ; I continue as much a recluse as I well can; the difficulty is to 
make this recluse life a diligent one ; I am almost despairing of ever be¬ 
ing able to make my life anything worth, whether alone or social. My 
mind seems for ever to carry about with it five hundred weight of earth, 
or lead, or some other heavy and useless material, which denies it all 
power of continued exertion. How much I could regret, that industry and 
all other virtues are not, by the constitution of nature, as necessary and 
inevitable as the descent of water down a hill, and of all heavy bodies to 
the earth. There has indeed been a considerable quantity of mental hard 
exercise in maufacturing and finishing the essays lately published; but 
this exertion was all by bits and pieces, and I have acquired even no degree 
of anything like a habit of strong exercise by the employment. I have 
kept for you one of a few copies which I had for something less than the 
regular price at which they are sold. The book is considerably less than, 
from the quantity of paper which it seemed to fill in writing, I had ex¬ 
pected it to make when printed. I will bring you this when I come. I do 
not know at all in what manner the thing sells; I shall not, however, be 
much disappointed if I should gain by it a good deal less than a hundred 
tJiousand pounds. I am afraid you and I were not born to find traps for 
catching crowds of those wandering guineas and bank-notes, with which 
some parts of this our earth seem to abound, and which some people, 
who do not seem so much wiser any other way than one’s self, have such 
a wonderful knack of tricking into their possession. 

.... I have done more justice to the beautiful season this year than 
in many former ones; for I have taken many solitary walks, and with a 
book a‘nd pencil in my hand have done my best to catch all the ideas, 
images, objects, and reflections, that the most beautiful aspects and scenes 
of nature could supply. I have felt it of some consequence to me, if I am 
to write again, to assemble as many natural facts and images as possible, 
to supply what may be called colors to writing. I must increase the 
stock, or I shall soon be out, as I have expended a great deal of material 
on what is already written. 

Into company I cannot actually take this book and pencil, but I en¬ 
deavor to seize fast every remarkable circumstance, and each disclosure 
of character that I witness, and then, when I return to my room, they go 
by dozens into my book. 

I keep to my text on the subject of forming new friendships; I am 



LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


21 i 

quite too old for it. When I see people good and sensible, I am glad of 
it for their sake, not for my own. 


LVI. TO THE REV. DR. RYLAND. 

Frome, August, 1805. 

Dear Sir, —I am ashamed that I have not sooner acknowledged your 
very friendly letter, which gratified me the more as the time in which it 
was written appeared to be actually stolen from the urgent claims of multi¬ 
plied duties. My envy has been numberless times excited by thinking 
of your faculty of despatching such a variety of literary and other busi¬ 
ness within the short space of each month ; and I have often, very often, 
made you a lesson of mortification to my own incurable indolence. Yet I 
am still unwilling to confess to myself that it is incurable, and would hope 
that a sense of duty, especially when aided by some measure of success, 
will yet prevail to excite me to vigorous and persevering exertion. When 
the listlessness returns, I trust the recollection of your exhortations and 
approbation will not be found a slight stimulus, as assuredly it will be 
felt a very strong reproach. I sincerely wish to render what service I 
may to the best cause, and if what has already appeared shall in any 
degree have this effect, I would be thankful to Heaven. Vanity is not 
probably my besetting sin, though it were in vain to disavow the indwell¬ 
ing of too much of this part and proof of human depravity. But I have 
no reason to reckon on such success as should greatly elate this very 
despicable passion, even if it were more prevalent than it is in my mind; 
especially as I have reason to expect the censure or contempt of one 
class of professed Christians, and of the most popular of those things 
called reviews, which contribute so much to lead and determine public 
opinion. I shall not cease to pray for a pure Christian zeal, and for di¬ 
vine assistance, to do what little an individual can do in this unhappy 
world. Have you never been inclined to regret that you were not reserved 
to come into it in that future glorious age when there will be so little 
necessary of the present order of Christian duties,—the zealous opposition 
to iniquity and error ? 

I have been constantly gratified to hear of your good health, and very 
active and successful labors. May the prospect of the crown still ani¬ 
mate those labors, and a gracious Providence long protract the health 
and vigor requisite for prosecuting them. 

. . . . I felt a degree of exultation to hear at last of the purchase of 
the premises in Stokes Croft.* It is a very noble acquisition to the 
cause : and we cannot doubt of an effect resulting which will continue 
even to the end of time. What have we to pray for next, but that the 
church may become prolific of combined talent and piety, so that a very 


* The present site of the Baptist College. 




LETTERS. 


215 


large number of young men may come forth qualified and animated, as 
agents of the divine power, to extend that kingdom which shall at length 
be extended, as to its space, over the earth ; and as to its duration, 
through eternity ? 

May we, my dear sir, and our friends, be the eternal witnesses and 
participants of its glory. 


LVII. TO MRS. GO WING. 


Frame, 1805. 

My dear Friend,— I have for several weeks past intended to write 

to you against the Sunday.To this I am prompted by an aftec- 

tionate regard for you, which time and absence do not diminish, and 
which I shall never lose. I am certain I shall never lose it, because I 
completely know the structure of my own mind, and know that I never 
lose any sentiment which is absolutely founded on the estimates of my 
judgment. And I hope I do not need to say to you again, that my esti¬ 
mate of you is very high. I must however observe to you, that I have 
many times been hurt by your seeming not to believe me sincere when 
expressing such an estimate. I have always been perfectly sin¬ 
cere when using even the strongest expressions that I have at any time 
used. It is true that a half-smiling manner has sometimes accompanied 
these expressions ; but that was your fault; I can never help this manner 
when I perceive that a person does not believe what I am saying. Do 
not then doubt my sincerity when I now assure you once more that I feel 
for you a very great degree of mingled respect and affection ; and that 
you are one of the very small number of persons that I have ever known, 
whose affection I shall always be anxious to retain, and shall rejoice in 
every indication that it is not lessened nor lost. 

Though I experience uniformly the utmost attention and respect from 
the family in whose house I am, I have never felt myself at home since I 
left your house. I never use the word home when speaking of, or re¬ 
turning to, the place of my residence. Whenever the word has occurred, 
my heart has rejected it, and recalled you, my dear friend, to my thoughts. 
With you I felt happy to pass a number of hours each day, till I felt the 
absolute necessity and duty of literary labor imposed on me, and that my 
extreme slowness of execution made all my time seem too little to do 
anything like what I wished. But even this allowed many pleasing so¬ 
cial hours. 

I wish you happy, my dear friend, and regret the unpleasant circum¬ 
stances that attend you. Probably, however, your prospects include 
some things which in one way will be an alleviation. Allow me to urge 
you with great earnestness to secure the greatest possible measure of 
the highest order of consolations. How many thousand times I have 
resolved to cultivate personal religion, and especially that part of it 



216 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


which consists in the direct exercises of devotion, with a much more 
serious diligence. I am still making the same resolutions, and not with¬ 
out hope. I would entreat you also to adopt this great expedient for 
happiness. We perfectly feel (and no instructions can make us more 
clearly understand) that we shall be happy or not in proportion to the 
prevalence or the want of habitual devotion to the Almighty. We are 
perfectly convinced too, that He will most certainly take a kind and pa¬ 
rental care of everything that concerns even the temporal interests of 
those who are his devoted servants. Amidst the uncertainty of my pros¬ 
pects I often wish to feel the full value of this consolation. Do you also, 
my dear friend, have recourse to this noblest cause of hope. 

.... What an immensity of beauty has spread over all your neigh¬ 
borhood since I was there. I have walked very little since then, but 
have been delighted at every sight of a hedge, tree, or field. A few days 
since 1 walked to the top of a very high hill about four miles from here, 
and saw a vast and beautiful prospect on almost every side. 

Having gone through the whole^of my late literary job without the 
help of an English dictionary of any kind, I have just now received as a 
present, from I do not know whom nor where, Johnson’s great dictionary, 
new and elegantly bound,—a book that must have cost, I suppose, four 
guineas. I am much obliged to them, whoever they are; and shall be 
so much the better provided for my next literary labors. I am begin¬ 
ning anxiously to consider what are to be the subjects of those labors, 
and do not yet know. 


LVIII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Frame, Jiug. 20, 1805. 

My dear Friend, —I have received your two notes, as well as your 
letter. I repeat to you that I am very grateful for the animated activity 
with which you have promoted my interests ; and yet, at the same time, 
I cannot but be sorry for the personal, detailed, and wnliterary trouble 
which it must have cost to sell a hundred and forty books. I really 
ought not, and cannot wish, to tax your friendship so far. 

Five hundred copies disposed of in so short time might, in the cir¬ 
cumstances, be considered as an extraordinary success, if so much of it 
were not owing to a few friendly individuals. Allow me to suggest to 
you not to send, in any way, any hastening intimation to any of the 

reviewers. L-paid a very good price for this kind of impatience. 

In some of the reviews the later the notice and the better. For which 
of them will Hall write his critique, if he do write one ? Such a one 
as he would write would not be accepted in the Monthly, which cauld 
do one the greatest service, and which will, in all probability, do an inju¬ 
ry. If a plausive character of the book appear in any other review 
earlier than the notice in the Monthly, that notice will be so much the 





LETTERS. 


217 


more spiteful on that account. I have a very clear perception of what 
that is in tlie style which your Socinian critic calls 'pompous and affeci&L 
It is a certain kept up formality, an artificial march of diction, which I 
have before calldd half-rhetorical. I wish it were possible to attain more 
ease and simplicity. As to praise and censure, whatever effect they 
may have on the feelings of vanity, they will have extremely little on 
my estimate of the book, or of the faculties which produced it; my own 
deliberate opinion is too deliberate to be raised or depressed. It were in 
vain to pretend that I do not feel so mucli of that mean passion which 
can be elated by applause, and mortified by the contrary, but there is 
nothing under heaven whicli I more sincerely and totally despise, and 
nothing which ever makes mo so emphatically despise myself. I feel it 
infinitely despicable at the very moment that I feel it excited ; and I 
hope by degrees to be substantially delivered from it. I have a thousand 
times been astonished that this mean feeling should not have been com¬ 
pletely extirpated by the sincere and deliberate contempt which I have 
long entertained for human opinion—opinion I do not mean as regarding 
myself, but as regarding any other person or book. . One cannot have 
lived thus long in the world without perceiving how little sterling sense 
there is among mankind, especially in regard to anything a little removed 
from the common ground of their business and attention. And then 
that which there is, neve?' operates simply and unbiassed by circum- 
tances tending to pervert it. How^ constantly everywhere one observes 
opinions to be the result of whim, of momentary impression, of par¬ 
tiality, of spite, or of adherence to a class; and to betray ignorance, 
incapacity, or inattention. There is neither aftectation nor sagacity in 
these remarks; the truth of them is obvious to every attentive observer; 
and I have observed long enough to acquire a fixed contempt of the 
opinions of mankind. It is needless to say, that by mankind we mean 
the generality, including, when this estimate of their opinions is ex¬ 
pressed, a very large proportion even of those who have received a con¬ 
siderable degree of cultivation. 

Whatever degree of vanity, less or more, I may feel, there is another 
feeling which in my present circumstances is much more prevalent, and 
which I do not despise myself for even indulging, ^^auri sacra fames^ 

A few corrections wdll be very necessary, yet I think the necessary 
are not many, and further than necessary it would be wrong to go, espe ¬ 
cially as the business must be to make another book, and not to be spend¬ 
ing time and labor without end on this one. Some of the obscure pas¬ 
sages are so from a kind of expression that may be mended; some 
appear so because the sentiment is recondite, and no form of words can 
make it plain to a reader who has not analogous sentiments of his own. 

I shall make corrective notes as they may occur to me. The grand 
fault in the fourth essay is the indefiniteness of the denomination, “ Evan¬ 
gelical Religion,” which I seem to use sometimes in a specific sense, 
and sometimes in the more general sense, tantamount to— Christianity. 


218 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


But this cannot be mended ; at least, I do not see how, as it goes through 
the whole texture. It must even be let alone. I am not certain that I 
had a correct idea of what is meant by the Omnipotence of Truth; nor 
whether it is right to.confound truth with conviction or persuasion, in the 
manner I have done. I do not see that more religious references ought 
to have appeared in the essay on Decision, &c., as the object was merely 
to illustrate the general principles of this decision, as applicable to reli¬ 
gious pursuits, or any other indifferently, and not to dwell, except very 
briefly, on any specific form of the operation of these principles. And 
besides, I think the volumes have quite a competent measure, on the 
whole, of what belongs to religion ; such a measure, that any considera¬ 
ble addition would have given the appearance of a specifically religious 
book, which would not have been the best policy, either for usefulness or 
literary success. I am glad of Wilberforce’s approbation. 

.... I shall reckon on seeing you both in Bristol and here ; and if 
it really will be of any use for me to visit London, I should prefer re¬ 
turning with you from the west. To do it just now, would seem as if 
I were very eager to get a little flattery, which I really am not, and 
which there is no need for me to appear to want. 

It is probable, that what I recollect to have said some time since 
about the continuance of my preaching, appeared to you only a casual 
or exaggerated expression; and I have felt little inclined to repeat the 
simple and absolute fact, that I shall not be able to preach any great 
while longer ; this is now become more certain than when I first said it. 

It is no matter of apprehension, but a thing entirely decided.It is 

not my ihroaJ now that causes me any inconvenience; that has K'^en 
perfectly well a long time ; the complaint is a formidable swelling of the 
gland that passes across the front of the neck, which cannot be reduced, 
and which in this enlarged state presses with a weight and constriction 
on the moving parts that are constantly in action in speaking; and the 
effort is at once very uneasy, sometimes quite painful, and causes a con¬ 
tinual increase of the evil. Even talking a great deal for several hours 
in company becomes very oppressive, as well as injurious ; and I look 
forward with dread mingling with pleasure to the whole days which 
I may spend with you some time hence. Lately I spent almost a whole 
day with Sibree, Williams of Westbury, and another of the fraternity ; 
and though much pleased with the company, the evening became ex¬ 
tremely oppressive from this physical cause, and the escape into silence 
by our separation was an exquisite luxury. I am probably destined, 
through the whole of life, to be under the necessity of restraining the 
copiousness of expression, even in the easy talk of domestic society. A 
grand advantage which I promise myself from this is, to acquire, from 
necessity, the art of putting more thought in fewer words—an inestima¬ 
ble art, for a writer especially. My regret for the preclusion from the 
possible utility of preaching is considerably consoled by the hope, that I 
may be able to render much greater services to the best Master, and the 




LETTERS. 


219 


best cause, by writing. Viewed in regard to my personal interests, this 

is a melancholy dispensation.I cannot see any reason for your 

relinquishment of literary purposes. With the amendment so often 
noted already, you will write vigorously and elegantly. We must both 
endeavor to do something that will speak a little while, at least, after we 
are finally silent. Keep yourself in the exercise, with a particular 
reference to the points where modification is desirable. 


LIX. TO MRS. R. MANT. 

Frame, JVovemher 22, 1805. 

.... During the summer, I several times intended to have written 
again ; but really I was not born under the writing planets, whichever they 
may be. It occurred to me sometimes, that it was but too probable you 
were again suffering that severe head-ache which has before so much 
lessened to you the value of the delightful season, delightful to a person 
in health. Yet, as I do not remember to have ever known a summer 
with so little oppressive heat, I am willing to persuade myself that you 
have not suffered quite so much as in former seasons. If you did not, 
.you would be delighted with the extraordinary beauty which prevailed 
throughout the entire season ; there was never a parching and scorching 
interval; the verdure never died, nor hardly even languished. I never 
have been more enchanted with a summer, since I left whatever part of 
creation or chaos I lived in, in former ages, and came to this our green 
orb. I took frequent solitary walks ; even as matter of duty I did it 
sometimes, when the attraction of pleasure might have failed to overcome 
my great indisposition to m.ove. Those walks were commonly in the 
retired fields and woody lanes, of which I found a number this last sum¬ 
mer in this neighborhood, some of them very beautiful, as well as 
extremely quiet. There are, besides, two or three extremely beautiful 
valleys not far from this town. As to the town itself, I do not know 
whether I told you how much I nauseate it; but no length of time would 
ever cure my loathing of it. But sweet Nature ! I have conversed with 
her with inexpressible luxury; I have almost worshipped her. A flower, 
a tree, a bird, a fly, has been enough to kindle a delightful train of ideas 
and emotions, and sometimes to elevate the mind to sublime conceptions. 
When the autumn stole on I observed it with the most vigilant attention, 
and felt a pensive regret to see those forms of beauty, which tell that all 
the beauty is going soon to depart. One autumnal flower (the white 
convolvulus) .... excited very great interest, by recalling the season 
I spent at Chichester, where I happened to be very attentive to this flower, 
and once or twice, if you recollect, endeavored to draw it with the pencil. 
I have at this moment the most lively image of my doing this, and of the 
delight I used to feel in looking at this beautiful flower in the hedges of 
those paths and fields with which both you and I are so well acquainted- 





220 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTEE. 


Yes, I am well acquainted, though it is now beginning to be long since 
my wanderings and musings there; yet I could most promptly find each 

field, each path, each gate, each corner, each stile.I could tell 

where I formed plans, indulged pensive regrets for the waste of past life, 
made pious resolutions, or let my fancy run into visionary reveries. All 
this is out of your house ; I need not say how well I recollect the circum¬ 
stances, conversations, readings, &c., which took place in the house. I 
shall always be partial to the recollection of that house ; to the pictures 
which gave a kind of life to the walls; to the pretty vine which crept in 
at my window;—and all this chiefly for the sake of the inhabitant—who, 
I conclude, is the inhabitant still, though I have left it so long. While 
she continues in it, may the greatest Being in the universe continually 
visit her there. I am well assured she will crave his society, and I know, 
too, that he loves to receive and accept such invitations. 


LX. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ.* 

Frome, JVovember 20, 1806. 

Dear Sir, —Your letter seems to require to be answered some time, 
and the present may be as proper a time as any other. The writer of an 
article in a Review is apprised, of course, of the conditions under which 
he writes it. He knows that the editor is responsible for the whole pub¬ 
lication, and that he must necessarily be the judge and arbiter of both 
the whole and the parts of every piece that is supplied and submitted to 
him. The writer, therefore, surrenders it at discretion, to be modified 
as the occasion requires, and abandons it to its chance without taking 
any further interest or care about it as his own. This is no doubt one 
cause, as I have seen some writer observe, that few pieces, comparatively, 
of good writing, will be likely to appear in reviews, since the writer will 
seldom make much effort about what is merely to serve its temporary 
purpose, and be no further an object of his care after he has sent it out 
of his hands. This, however, is the condition under which he writes, 
and his business is to keep himself perfectly indiflferent in what manner 
his pages may be put in print. All this I knew, and therefore need not 
disavow the remotest wish to interfere in any way with the province and 
authority of the editor. After the piece is printed, and indeed after these 
few lines, I shall not make the smallest remark or complaint. 

As you have made some remarks and exceptions, however, I will here 
say a few words in the person of the writer of the piece. 

And, in the outset, I do not believe there is one sentence too much in 
the spirit of censure or satire. It may be all very true about Sir William’s 
good qualities among his friends, but here he comes forth before the 

* In reference to Mr. Foster’s critique on Forbes’s Life of Beattie, inserted 
in the Eclectic Review for January and February, 1807, “ Contributions,” 
&c., vol. I., p, 19—36. 



LETTERS. 


221 


public with a great book. In the first place, this book is quite unneces¬ 
sary, as there was a fully long enough account of Dr. Beattie before 
published; and if it had been necessary, it is far too big for the subject, 
unless, as I have said, all proportion and modesty, as to the extent of 
record claimed by individuals, are to be set at defiance. This is, besides, 
becoming a custom, and Hayley has played the penny and. book-making 
game with a vengeance. This book is eked out with very many very 
insignificant letters, with leaf after leaf of fac-similes, with analyses of 
books, with long stories about the union of colleges, and with an immense 
quantity of miscellaneous heraldic biography and genealogy. In the 
next place, unless all the rules by which we judge of men in their con¬ 
versation are to be reversed, wlien we are to judge of so much of their 
characters as they voluntarily choose to display in their books, there never 
was a greater excess of ostentation on the part of the author than in this 
book. It is impossible not to know what judgment we should form, as to 
this point, of a man who, alluding in the course of his conversation to 
many distinguished personages, should always take*care to let us know 
that these persons were his old familiar acquaintance, when there was no 
other use in the information, and no need to give it. It appears evident 
to me, that not a few of these short pieces of biography and genealogy 
were introduced for the very purpose of telling, that the author was 
acquainted with one distinguished personage more : and if this is not the 
case, and all this is done in sheer simplicity, the reviewer cannot be 
exculpated for letting go, without castigation, an instance of such 
weakness as would be made a precedent of unbounded ostentation and 
egotism. Sir W. takes care to tell, that much stronger things in the 
way of compliment were in Dr. Beattie’s letters to him, but that he has 
left them out, and this is said to apologize for those strong things which 
are retained. Why, in the name of decency, were they not both omitted ? 
Or, if this could not be done without actually destroying the texture of the 
letters, why were the letters printed at all ? Who wanted the letters, or 
can be benefited by them ? And besides, unless he had intimated that 
the emolument from the book would, at least in part, be applied to some 
other than personal use, does not the whole affair look like his raising 
money by showing strangers the monument of his friend ? 

Again; the correspondence is most obviously crammed with excess 
of praise and mutual flattery : here my eye glances on your remark, that 
“ everybody is made splenetic by everybody else’s praise.” This may 
be true enough, but what has it to do with the subject ? The reviewer 
may be prompted by spleen, and half a dozen more such virtues, but this 
is nothing to the public; the question is only whether his allegation is 
just, that is, whether it is true ; and surely the present case is out of all 
doubt. Are not the correspondents habitually larding and daubing one 
another with flattery from head to foot, and next, all their acquaintance ? 
Is not every virtue, every accomplishment, and every talent almost, con¬ 
stantly attributed to each other, and all who were their friends; while at 


222 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the very same time we know that many of them were just no better than 

they should be ? Even the late miserable hrchbishop- is liberally 

bepraised, of whom I happen to know specific facts that prove him one 
of the meanest muckworms that ever crawled into a mitre. Sir W. de¬ 
scribes James Boswell as a man of “ fervent devotion!!!” These are his 
identical wo^ds, and I should have cited them in the critique, but because 
I thought it could not be done without requiring to be accompanied wfith 
some expression of such emphatical censure or contempt as would be 
absolute rudeness. They all join with one consent in the profoundest 
sorrow, on account of the profane and frivolous Garrick, who was, how¬ 
ever, one of the best of human beings. As to the lavish excesses of en¬ 
comium on Dr. B. and his writings, let it be recollected, that there were 
many contemporary writers of even greater fame; and that they, it is to 
be presumed, had also their friends, who v/rote to them and of them in 
the very same style. Now only imagine that the correspondence of and 
concerning each of them were to be published, after this edifying exam¬ 
ple, what is to become of us then, or of modesty, decency, or sense ? 
What a nauseous inundation of fulsome folly we should have to wade, 
swim, or drown in. And why should not this be done in every instance ? 
There would be the same right. Now is a critic, because he is called 
Eclectic, and is an excellent good Christian, to let all this pass as a dis¬ 
play of the amiable feelings of friends for one another, as Sir W. would 
have it understood ? Or is he even to praise it, as I dare say some of 
the Reviews have done, though I have not seen one of them ? Or if he 
blames it, is he to do this in a dull quotation from Tillotson’s Sermons, 
or in the feebleness of a few milk-and-water phrases ? If friends choose 
to write in this style to and of one and another, let them; the critic is 
not bound to keep in his pay scoundrels, to rob the mails in order to come 
at their letters ; but if these are all to be published, I think he is bound 
by every law of public decorum to indict the nuisance. 

Then as to the royal conversation, as what, and for what, is it to be in¬ 
troduced ? As a specimen of royal wisdom ? or for an attempt to coax 
the public, by an overdone loyalty, to take in the review ? This would 
seem much of a piece with the awkward and laborious loyalty by which 
the dissenters have of late years disgraced themselves in many of their 
publications. It however loses, as it deserves to lose, its reward. A 
spirited, independent, critical work may easily throw off this, without on 
the other hand dashing into faction. Can there be a more fair object 
of satire than that pomp and importance which a literary man assumes, 
and his friends for him, on account of his having talked with .... a 
liing ? It appears to me, quite time of the day to show that we are not 
to be gulled into admiration of his sublime fortune. It w'ould be difficult 
to show this seriously without an air of faction; dry, calm satire, there¬ 
fore, is the only resource. 

On the whole, then, I am entirely of the opinion with which I began 
(and it is quite in character for any kind of writer to be of this opinion 




LETTERS. 


223 


concerning anything he has written, if it were even but a paragraph in 
a newspaper), that if one sarcastic or condemnatory sentence is softened 
and neutralized, it will be so much spoiled, not simply in respect of writ¬ 
ing, but of justice. Better turned sarcasms or censures may be easily 
invented, but if the writing is reduced out of satire and out of censure, it 
is destroyed as a review. 

The Eclectic wants a greater proportion of this class of writing; I do 
not say like my specimens, but of this general quality. There are a 
good many exceptions, and I verily believe these are from the pen of the 
editor; but the greater part falls under the heavy censure of literary 
men (without whose approbation no literary work can prosper), as defec¬ 
tive in spirit, freedom, and poignancy. I have heard a good many of 
tliem talk of the subject; and what they say is, that the Review dares 
nothing; that its highest ambition seems to be to do no harm; that it 
takes the style of a puritan divine in some instances where that of Vol¬ 
taire would be better; that it is too anxious to preserve a quiet impunity 
under the wings of orthodoxy and loyalty; that it is like a dog that has 
been whipped, and therefore but just ventures to growl, and then runs 
away .... &.C., occ. 

I should not forget to allude to the parts of the article in question 
which relate to the pecuniary assistance deemed necessary to Dr. Beattie, 
and to the niece of Mrs. Cockburn, and these passages ought to be bitter, 
whether they are or not. Nothing can possibly be too acrid for the occa¬ 
sions. One recollects the cases of Burns, Bloomfield, &c., but those in 
question are much more legitimate cases for the lash. 

Here is a man of moderate, economical, prudent habits; a deep stu¬ 
dent, a diligent lecturer, an useful writer, and an amiable man; who is 
in circumstances hardly afibrding, or securing the permanence of, the 
comforts of life *, and there arc a very great number of affluent, literary, 
titled, and most affectionate dear friends, and Sir William among them, 
who are wishing, and ivishing, and wishing that some little matter could 
be done for him, while they are rolling, many of them, in luxury and 
splendor. That his delicacy would not have refused their generosity, is 
evident from the animated gratitude he expressed for Mrs. Montague’s 
hint. And here again is a desolate widow of extraordinary worth and 
endowments, who is actually known to, and visited hy a great number of 
persons of distinction, and particularly the Duchess of Gordon, who yet 
lives dozens of years in a state next to absolute want; and yet these per¬ 
sons’ knowing her is mentioned by Sir W. v/ith the utmost compla¬ 
cency !! ! Now if a Review can pass quietly over all this as all very 
good and pretty, or just only make some innocent, insipid remark upon 
it, that Review deserves to perish. I have no more to add, but that hav¬ 
ing thus told my mind, I shall not make the slightest complaint, what¬ 
ever alteration is made, and that I remain. 

Yours respectfully, 

J. Foster. 


224 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


LXI. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Frome, January 21, 1807. 

.... I am writing to Paternoster Row for a whole set of the Edin¬ 
burgh Review. It is a work essential to the library of a literary man. 
My own experiments in reviewing make me more distinctly feel the 
measure of talent evinced in that work; a work, though, of very bad 
tendency as to religion, 

.... You saw the stupid article about the Essays in the Monthly 

Review.The Edinburgh will not take any notice.I have 

been struck at seeing how^ much the truth of the last essay is evinced 
by the very manner in which all the Reviews, excepting the one or two 
specifically religious, have noticed that essay. Even the candid and 
plausible ones have considered it as the worst part of the book,—a kind 
of appendage of subordinate material which had better have been omitted. 

For the last three months nearly, I have been keeping myself to w'ork 
with great seclusion, and a tolerable degree of application,—a very 
meritorious application, since it has been a dogged self-compulsion ; for 
all the labor has been invitd Minerva. Yes, I have almost every day 
felt it an ungracious and unsuccessful task,—ungracious in a great 
measure from its being unsuccessful. Almost the only exception to this 
description was in one or two of the days in which I wrote the critique 
on Sir W. Forbes, which I did with a facility which I have never felt 
since. In part I attribute the sterility and inert cast of thought to the 
dreary influence of v»?inter; and I am warranted to do this, from having 
always felt this eflect of this influence since I had anything to do with 
studying and writing. Johnson may say what he pleases, but 1 know, 
and have long known, as to myself, that there is a very great difterence, 
in the powers of imagination at least, between winter and the spring and 
autumn. On this account I regretted that my London dissipation 
should fall in such a w’ay as to alienate the finest part of autumn from 
the business of composition. The two or three first w^eeks after my 
return hither I felt the most extreme repugnance to go to work, and had 
also, as another prevention, a number of visits to make. After these 
two or three thus spent, I flagellated myself in great anger, and drove 
myself to work, and have kept at it ever since, with the occasional inter¬ 
ruption of a day, which has been lost, perhaps, from some visiting person 
spoiling the morning, which, during these short days, is incomparably 
the best part. By sheer hard labor I have worked out perhaps twice as 
much as I ever did within the same number of weeks before, but hardly 
one page has appeared to me to be done well. I have worked under the 
feeling that I must not wait for more auspicious times, but, good or bad, 
must absolutely produce something. The subject also is unfavorable,* 
as being of a wide and common-place nature, just as well admitting one 
thing to be said as another, and all resting on a few main principles, so 

* On the Improvement of Time. 




f 


LETTERS. 


225 


perfectly trite and obvious, that it is excessively difficult to give the 
smallest appearance of point or novelty. As to fine figures, not one of 
them ever comes near me. I never before thought and wrote so much 
with half so few images. The utility of the business will be the only 
consolation. Of that I cannot altogether fail. There is no hope of 
getting to an end in less than three months; for the truth is that I had 
written hardly anything before I returned hither from London. A 
number of sheets full of mere topics and hints indeed, but no composi¬ 
tion. I see no chance that the thing will be much less than the whole 
of the four essays together. 


LXII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Frome, March 12, 1807. 

.... My having transferred my residence to a different house, 
together with a deluge of new entertainment rushing upon me in the 
form of the Edinburgh Review, and several other things, has made a 
deplorable chasm in my sentence-making for more than a month past. 
But I must and will be at it again from this day forward. I am quite 
ashamed to see how much the days are lengthened since I did anything 
material to the business. It will not, however, be quite in vain to have 
read a large portion of this terrible Review ; a work probably superior to 
everything of the kind for the last century, everything since Bayle’s time. 
I read it with abhorrence of its tendency as to religion, but with admira¬ 
tion of everything else. It cannot fail to have a very great effect on the 
literary world, by imperiously requiring a high style of intellectual per¬ 
formance, and setting the example. It is most wonderful how a parcel 
of young men have acquired such extensive and accurate knowledge, 
and such a firm, disciplined, unjuvenile habit of thinking and composing. 
But I shall not be made to believe that they have not an old fox or two 
among them. Yet they all admirably support the general level of able per¬ 
formance. The belles-lettres critics seem to be stocked with logic as well 
as principles of taste, and the scientific critics to be fraught with satire 
as well as definitions. Either their modesty or their pride keeps them 
almost clear of any direct attention to theology, but their incidental 
references are detestable and pernicious. It may not seem very consis¬ 
tent after this to insist, that you must have this work, from the beginning, 
and so must or ought every other intellectual and literary man: he can¬ 
not pretend to have a competent library without it. 


LXIII. TO JOSEPH COTTLE, ESQ. 
fin answer to an invitation to meet S. T. Coleridge.] 

Frome, June, 1807. 

Mr DEAR Sir, —I am very unfortunate in having made an engagement 
16 





226 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


two or three weeks back, to go just at this time on a very particular 
occasion, to a distant place in this county, and therefore being deprived 
of the very high luxury to which you so kindly invite me. I shall be 
unavoidably detained, for a very considerable time, and my imagination 
will strongly represent to me the pleasure and advantage of which an 
inevitable necessity deprives me. But I will indulge the hope, that I 
shall some time be known to Mr. Coleridge, under more favorable cir¬ 
cumstances in a literary respect, than I can at present, after a regular 
application to the severer order of studies shall in some measure have 
retrieved the consequences of a very loose and indolent intellectual dis¬ 
cipline, and shall have lessened a certain feeling of imbecility which 
always makes me shrink from attempting to gain the notice of men 
whose talents I admire. 

No man can feel a more animated admiration of Mr. Coleridge than 1 
have retained ever since the two or three times that I was a little while 
in his company ; and during his absence in the south and the east, I have 
very often thought with delight of the immense acquisitions which he 
would at length bring back to enrich the works which I trust the public 
will in due time receive from him, and to which it has an imperious 
claim. And still I trust he will feel the solemn duty of making his 
very best and continued efforts to mend as well as delight mankind, now 
that he has attained the complete mastery and expansion of his admira¬ 
ble powers. You do not fail, I hope, to urge him to devote himself 
strenuously to literary labor. He is able to take a station amongst the 
most elevated ranks, either of the philosophers or the poets, l^ray tell 
me what are his immediate intentions, and whether he has any important 
specific undertaking in hand. For the sake of elegant literature, one is 
very glad that he has had the opportunity of visiting those most interest¬ 
ing scenes and objects which you mention. Will you express to him in 
the strongest terms my respect, and my animated wishes for his health, 
his happiness, and his utility. You can inform me what is the nature 
of that literary project to which you allude. Tell me also, what is the 
state and progress of your own literary projects, and T hope I may say 
labors. 

I behaved shabbily about some slight remarks which I was to have 
ventured on Mr. Southey’s Madoc. On reading the critiques of the 
Edinburgh Review on Thalaba and Madoc, I found what were sub¬ 
stantially my own impressions, so much better developed than I could 
have done, that I instantly threw my remarks away. Let me hear from 
you when you have half an hour of leisure, and believe me to be with 
every kind remembrance to your most excellent family, my dear sir, 

Most cordially yours, 

John Foster. 


LETTERS. 


227 


LXIV. TO MRS. R. MANT. 

Frotne, July 18, 1807. 

.... In the article of society, I know you are unfortunate, and have 
long been so. Even if the persons near you would be friendly, they 
would yield you but a very defective satisfaction; their tastes are in 
general so very different from yours. Though you would sometimes be 
you would not be frivolous, and though you would be gay sometimes, 

yet you would wish to be often serious.A time will come, when 

you will know why it was appointed you to walk to a better state and 
better society through a path so desolate and solitary. That it is ap¬ 
pointed by infinite wisdom and goodness your faith is well assured, though 
it is perhaps unavoidable for the heart sometimes to feel sad. Women 
that pass through life without forming any domestic connections are 
sometimes, perhaps generally, left more solitary than others when they 
advance towards its latter part. But yet, what circumstances of vexa¬ 
tion and wretchedness they escape. This remark I am led to make by 
a fact that has happened in this town this very morning. A middle- 
aged woman, a widow, who has always borne a respectable character, 
lias cut her throat, and is dead, owing, it is said, to the vexation occa¬ 
sioned her by two wicked sons. Think of this, my dear friend, and 
consider how much better is a situation like yours, in a social respect, 
than one so miserable as to lead to such a catastrophe. 1 could wish 
you, what perhaps you cannot have, excellent, cheerful, and social 
friends; but I still more wish you, what you can have, much of the 
society of that supremely beneficent Being, who is able to make you a 
compensation, both here and hereafter, for all that he at present sees it 
proper to refuse you. Let me once again exhort you, while I would 
admonish myself also, to be much in the exercise of making your re¬ 
quests known to the Almighty. It is the greatest of all consolations 

upon earth.My father and mother are still living, but very infirm; 

the former being I believe as much as eighty-two years of age, and the 
latter about seventy-five. My brother, who is a number of years younger 
than myself, has three or four children. 


LXV. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Frame, January, 1808. 

My DEAR Friend, —. ... I am sitting in the midst of authors, in 
the office of Minos ; a pack of scoundrels they are ; infidels to a man, 
both small and great. J ust now I am about the vile pamphlet of Scott 
Waring (as I am told), called “ Observations,” &.c. I repeat to you, 
tiiis is a most excellent mode of mental and preparatory exercise ; and I 
feel very sensibly that I acquire a stronger hand, and a more compre¬ 
hensive view, by means of it. Once more, therefore, I exhort you to 





228 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


join in the same good cause. For a good while past I have quite neg¬ 
lected any other composition ; and probably shall do so now till quite 
into the fine days of spring, which, spite of Johnson, is far more favor¬ 
able to original thinking, and the rich play of imagination, than this 
chill and dreary season, with its fogs, snows, and endless nights. The 
authorship will be all the better, when I set to it in earnest, from this 
diversified exercise, in which I continually am made to feel a humiliating 
debility, and a prodigious ignorance. Often I am perhaps too willing to 
impute the former to the latter. Both will lessen by the continuance 
of discipline. The removal to Bourton will rather harden than slacken 
this discipline. Our plan is that of a mutually very hard life. My 
Maria rejoices in this prospect, and will be an estimable companion and 
prompter, and participator of improvement. She regrets the indolence 
and mental lassitude of her past life as much as I do of mine ; and, for 
conscience’ sake, for pleasure’s sake, for utility’s sake, and for each 
other’s sake, we shall adopt a plan by which we shall hope to make the 
improvement of our united life equal to its tenderness. 


LXVI. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Frome, Fehj'iiary 15, 1808. 

.... Coleridge was lately in Bristol, and Cottle wrote to me to say 
they two had been on the point of visiting me at Frome, but that Cottle’s 
lameness had decided them rather to ask me to go to Bristol. It was 
impossible for me to do this at the time, without putting oflT the review 
of Scott Waring to a later number of the Eclectic, which P. had 
earnestly deprecated, and for what were obviously good reasons. I was 
compelled therefore to decline it, and wrote to Cottle to express my 
highest respect to Coleridge, and my hope that I might some time per¬ 
haps better deserve to be acquainted with the great genius. 

Coleridge has some project of a new review, it seems, on which Cottle 
says he wished to talk with me, having heard, I suppose, that I am a 
decent journeyman, as the business in general goes. Have you attended 
any of his lectures at the Royal Institution ? Cottle says he is very 
greatly improved as to the religious part of the character of his mind, 
and that really he is even substantially orthodox, as well as a believer in 
Christianity in the general. I do not suppose he will have the requisite 
perseverance for giving full effect to a review, if it should ever be com¬ 
menced. 

.... Once more I tell you to become a reviewer ; it will fling your 
diction abroad into variety and freedom. It is the best writing discipline 
in the world. If that Coleridge should really begin, we will now and 

then get to be of his gang.You must not think of leaving this 

dusty planet without first writing a valuable and a fine book or two; 
but in order to this you must get more freedom of diction, and this re¬ 
viewing is the very thing. 






LETTERS. 


229 


LXVII. TO HISS B- 


Fromey February 15, 1808. 

.... I shall always recollect with most grateful pleasure the very 
large contribution to the interest and felicity of my life, which has been 
derived from your family during a number of years past, and which I 
trust will, at successive times, be derived again; for I should leave this 
place with a melancholy feeling if I did not promise myself that I shall 
sometimes, wherever I may be placed, see you in visits of not a short 

duration to me and my Maria.I do not regard it as likely that 

we shall continue, if life is prolonged, any very long time at Bourton. 
It is very much too far from any grand scene of human society and 
knowledge, to be adapted to the kind of life to which I am necessarily 
and permanently devoted. It is not, as you well know, that 1 want to be 
very much in various society, but I want the means of knounng and 
seeing with facility many things which are to be known and seen only 
in, or in the neighborhood of, very large towns. The neighborhood of 
Bristol would please me better than almost any other place ; and if we 
should become residents there, it would be a thing of perfect ease to see 
you, even frequently. Meanwhile, you must endeavor to think it worth 
while to visit Bourton. Our residence there for a short time—say for 
two or three years—if life should continue, may very well suit for tbe 
kind of improvement and attainment which I am most defective in, and 
most determined to endeavor to acquire. 

I am glad you have met with so many things and persons that have 
given you pleasure or improvement. In Coleridge you saw one of the 
highest class of human beings, with respect to combination of talents, 
and I am exceedingly glad to learn from Mr. C. that he is much more 
firmly established in the principles of religion than at any former period 
of his life; he is, as Mr. C. tells me, in a very great degree even ortho¬ 
dox. If this were previous to his being exposed to all the causes which 
contribute to pervert human genius, one should be less assured of its 
value ; but it is very gratifying when this is the state of such a mind 
after travelling over Europe, associating with wits and infidel philoso¬ 
phers, and being exposed to the influence of a thousand things tending 
to lead such a mind into an oblivion or rejection of Christian truth. I won¬ 
der he should have maintained a theory on the subject of taste, which, 
as you observe, there are such a multitude of facts to confute. I shall 
be very glad to hear you personally tell all that you observed, heard, or 
thought, in attending his lecture. 

The friend to whom you refer has been, since you saw her, trans¬ 
ferred by a greater Friend to a happier region, from which affection 
could not for one moment wish to recall her to a life of suffering. That 
suffering no doubt was intended, and has conduced, to qualify her for the 
sublime scene and society to which she has been called. It will be very 
consolatory to you in reflection to have seen her, to have soothed her afflic- 




230 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


lion, and to have witnessed her preparation for the superior abodes. You 
will combine the two ideas, of what she was, and what she is, in a more 
affecting manner, and when some of the pensiveness of thought is removed 
by time, in a more pleasing manner, than you would have been able to do 
if you had not seen her once more before the change. I earnestly hope 
that whoever shall be appointed to precede us, or to follow us, in the 
transition to another life, we shall exercise incessant solicitude and dili¬ 
gence, that we may not fail to be added in due time to the best and hap¬ 
piest beings in the universe. 

When you return hither you will probably find the generality of per¬ 
sons and things much in the same state as when you left them. 

As to myself, I am solitary still, with the exception of the interesting 
hours which I pass at your house, and a very occasional visit to a few 
other houses. Sometimes, from a species of absolute force, I am very 
industrious for a week or two, and then I relapse into musing indolence, 
or the most desultory and useless kind of reading. Reviewing has been 
the chief part of anything I could call labor for a good while past, and I 
find it an extremely advantageous mode of literary exertion, as to its 
effect in strengthening the power of comprehension and vigorous ex¬ 
pression. In this respect I am sensible of a gradual, though slow 
improvement of the intellectual powers and operation. I most sincerely 
promise myself to improve much faster in a given space of time when I 
have an interesting domestic associate, whose congenial taste and solici¬ 
tude not to live in vain will often inspire a degree of animation into im¬ 
portant pursuits, which it is impossible almost to maintain in the cold 
listlessness of habitual solitude. My estimable associate expects a very 
hard life, in regard to mental exertion, and she loves to expect it, both 
as forming a dignified basis of social interest, and as strongly adapted 
to her own improvement, not to mention that such an occupation of so¬ 
cial time will materially contribute to facilitate the prosecution of a 
business which is to be in part the source of competence, and may also 
obtain a little for beneficence, and may effect a little for public utility. 

... I cannot, my dear friend, have lived so long in this world, without 
acquiring the painful knowledge that all human hopes are subject to a 
degree of disappointment; for this, to some certain extent, both myself 
and M. are pensively prepared ; but we do uniformly think, that if Pro¬ 
vidence shall be benign, we have a rational prospect of a greater measure 
of felicity (but it seems almost presumption for an inhabitant of the earth 
to use such a word) than we generally see in married life, and that this 
felicity will be of a finer quality. We do not forget, that in some way 
or other it is the inevitable lot of mortality to experience sorrow, but we 
do hope we cannot be fated to regard each other as the cause of it. 

I have just received Mr. Cottle’s new poem, “ The Fall of Cambria,” 
in two duodecimos', and have read a little, from which I think it must be 
a pleasing work; you can mention it, if any one asks you to name a new 
book for a reading society. 



M1SCELLANE0U3 OBSERVATIONS. 


231 


LXVIII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Framei March 3, ISOS. 

.... Yes, the spring does open upon me with a fascination which I 
have not felt before, notwithstanding that I have often felt a kind of 
worship of nature, on the return of that delightful season, with its flow¬ 
ers, birds, and genial gales. This once I certainly do feel in its first in¬ 
dications a deeper charm than I did even in my youth, when I was as 
full of fancy and sentiment as any poet. For several years I have been 
much less susceptible of the vernal impressions, and have considered 
myself as advancing fast toward the state of feeling which I recollect P. 
a few years since described himself to me as having reached, the state 
of feeling no impression at all. And no doubt it is from the new and 
adventitious cause, that I have felt such luxury in the beautiful days, 
which we Jiave had for a week past. 

I am glad of your concurrence in opinion as to the high value for 
domestic interest, of associated intellectual enjoyments. This is both to 
me and M. supremely gratifying, as furnishing at all events, a perfect 
security against ennui, and the waste of time,—as involving and even 
necessitating, the improvement of both our minds,—as improving them 
in the same direction, so as to make the individual attainments inter¬ 
changeable, and so to speak mutually recognizable,—as tending to pro¬ 
mote our highest interests, as giving scope for great diversification in the 
indulgence of tenderness,—and as essentially conducing to our ordinary 
temporal means ;—to a certain extent, I may perhaps add, as tending to 
efiect a little public usefulness.We are most powerfully con¬ 

vinced, that no mistake could be more fatal than that of the uncalculating 
persons who, in forming such an union, place their ichole reliance on 
affection and its indulgences. This is the wretched mistake commonly 
made by very young persons, and which I myself was not incapable of 
having made at that age. For many years past, however, I have been 
too wise. 


MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, FACTS, SUGGESTIONS, ETC., WRITTEN 

DURING MR. Foster’s residence at frome. 

1. A long, admonitory, and cogent conversation with Mr. and Mrs. 

-about education. Insisted on the indispensable law of habitual, 

prompt’ and absolute obedience of young children. In observing on the 
mode of obtaining this obedience, represented strongly the wretchedness 
of the plan which does not maintain authority as a necessary and habit¬ 
ual thing in so uniform a manner that the child scarcely even thinks of 
resistance, any more than of thrusting its hand into the fire; but by a 
succession of violent efforts each of which is of the nature of a battle, 
and a trial of strength and of rights with the child, in which the success 
(when success, even of any kind, is gained) is just a bare effect of 





232 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


physical force. Strongly represented that acts of authority and correC' 
tion should be done without bustle, in a short, calm, decisive manner. 

2. How transcendently ridiculous is the excess of the passion of love, 
when the object is demonstrably a very insignificant one. A young 
newly-married pair have just been in this neighborhood ; the young man 
was opposed for a while by the girl’s father ; but, after some time, even 
the old fellow thought the young one would die, if he were prevented 
from attaining the object. I could not help asking contemptuously, 
“ And what are the illustrious qualities of this girl ? (I had been well 
informed she was very insignificant.) What is she to be to him, or to 
do for him ? Has she angelic virtue, or extraordinary sense, or vast 
stores of knowledge, or any other rare, inestimable resources for creating 
the happiness of an associate ?” I could perceive that some of the per¬ 
sons (young ones) before whom I ridiculed this passion, understood me 
to scorn, and therefore not to comprehend, and to be incapable of feeling, 
ardent sentimentalism unconditionally. I therefore observed that this 
ridicule is absolutely warranted and rational, when the object of passion 
does really not possess any of the high and rare qualities; but that on 
the very same principles a deep passion is dignified and rational, to a 
certain extent, when the object actually does, in the estimate of sober 
intelligence, possess distinctions of extraordinary value. It would not 
have been a desertion of reason, and a ridiculous thing, to have felt an 
enthusiastic passion for Lady Jane Grey. Certainly the excess of feel¬ 
ing which regards a human being as a kind of divinity, is in all possible 
cases absurd, and therefore either ridiculous or criminal; still this does 
not prevent that a great degree of passion is in some definable cases 
rational. 

3. Walked with a gentleman into a very singular and very beautiful 
rural scene ; was disgusted and amused by his inappropriate and extra¬ 
vagant expressions of admiration ;—“ glorious,” “ incomparable,” “ why 
this is heaven itself,” &c. I could not ascertain whether he really felt 
any considerable degree of interest, but I thought he did. I could per¬ 
ceive he had not the smallest perception of the distinct kinds and gra- 

•dations of beauty, nor of any of the principles and laws of observation. 
A manufactory is going to be built in this solitary scene; he thought 
this would be a great improvement to it. 

4. Mr. C., a preacher, told me how very tiresome and useless he felt 
the long visits which he seemed under the necessity of making,—visits 
including, perhaps, dinner, tea, and supper. I suppose there are hun¬ 
dreds of preachers, and thousands of other reflective persons, who would 
join in this complaint. It is high time they should be advised to adopt, 
according to their own convictions of the value and use of time, a de¬ 
cisive time-saving plan, and that the people should be taught the pro¬ 
priety of not censuring such a plan and resolution. 

6. Struck exceedingly with the thought, how completely men, for the 
most part, are and must be confined to their own little spot of this earth, 


MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 


233 


like the animalculae belonging to their own particular leaf, or rabbits 
keeping to their warren. It is a great consolation under this feeling of 
extreme confinement, that the earth is substantially the same every¬ 
where ; in any distant part which I might wish to see, the earth only 
consists of earth, grass, trees, hills, stones, waters, &.C., with just here 
and there, indeed, an extraordinary circumstance, as a glacier, a volcano, 
a vast cataract, a large race of animals, or some remarkable monument 
of human industry or art. These one should be most happy to see, if 
one could pass instantaneously from one to another; but the vast spaces 
between these constitute the bulk of the world, and are quite of a 
common order. One may nearly as well be confined to a space of 
ten square miles as have the power of rapidly expatiating over half a 
continent. , 

Interesting subject of speculation.—How men are confined to their 
own little habitations ; their own little district of fields, paths, brooks 
(or one brook), and hillocks; their own little circle of acquaintance; 
their own little sphere of observation. 

What is the use or value of communities, extending beyond actual 
communication—of states, republics, kingdoms, empires ? 

How can we take interest enough in distant beings of our own sort, 
to feel anything that deserves to be called universal benevolence ? Why 
did the supreme Disposer put so many beings in one world, under cir¬ 
cumstances which necessarily make them strangers to one another ? ■ 

Views which strongly realize to the mind the vast multitude of man¬ 
kind, tend to contract benevolence. The mind seems to say. What can 
I do with all this crowd ? I cannot keep them in my habitual view ; I 
cannot extend my affections to a thousand millions of persons who know 
nothing, and care nothing about me or each other; I can do them no 
good, I derive no good from them; they have all their own concerns, 
and I have mine; if I were this moment annihilated it would be all the 
same to them, and if a whole continent full of them were annihilated, 
it would be the same to me;—there is no connection, nor relation, nor 
sympathy, nor mutual interest between us. I cannot therefore care 
anything about them ; my affections cannot reach beyond these four or 
five with whom my own personal interests are immediately connected. 

6. What a numberless succession of distressing feelings must attend 
the life of a person who has some striking deformity. I undesignedly 
caused one of these feelings lately, when I called in the dusk of the 
evening, at the house of a poor person in this town, who belongs to our 
society. There lives with her another poor woman, who supports her¬ 
self by working in the fields, &c. This woman has, I am told, a very 
frightful and monstrous configuration of the one side of her face, caused, 
it is said, by her mother being frightened during^ pregnancy. She 
wears always a handkerchief or cloth over this side of her face. With¬ 
out knowing the woman or the unfortunate circumstance, I observed in 
the darkness of the evening that the person’s face, as she sat by the fire, 


234 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


was thus partly bound up, and asked the woman of the house, “ What 
is the matter with your friend ?” and I saw and regretted the movements 
indicating confusion and distress in the person in question, while the 
other was telling me what the matter was. It would be a very benevo¬ 
lent exercise of talent to write a piece in the way of consolation to 
persons laboring under the affliction of deformity. This may indeed 
have been already done, if one knew by what author. I remember 
having read a foolish novel which professed to have this intention. The 
mode of doing it was, to make the young woman, by a lucky accident, 
become heiress to the wealth of an old nobleman, amounting to 
£800,000. 

7. (Of preachers.) It is strange to observe how some men, whose 
business is thought and truth, acquire no enlargement, accession, or 
novelty of ideas, from the course of many years, and a wide scope of 
experience. It might seem as if they had slept the last twenty years, 
and now awaked with exactly the same intellectual stock, which they 
had before they began the nap. 

8. In glancing over the movements and local varieties of my past life, 
I feel a degree of regret to think what an immense number of pictures 
• my mind has lost; what a number of views of woods, hills, streams, 
towns, ruins, human companies, have been before these eyes, and for a 
wdiile painted on this imagination, which are now quite vanished. Of a 
great many others I retain but the faintest trace. I am led to this re¬ 
flection by having just recalled (I do not know’^ w^liat suggested it) the 
scenes, the persons, the conversation at and about Mr. Chippendale’s, 
in a wdld part of Yorkshire, wdiicli I have not probably recollected for 
months or years past. I find this recollection associated (I am totally 
ignorant wffly) with another scene w Inch I do not know whether I ever 
saw' in reality or not, and wdtii a third which I did see near Kilkenny or 
Clonmel, I cannot tell wdiich. It w'ould really have been a good thing 
to have kept, ever since the earliest youth, a progressive record of all 
the circumstances and objects which excited great attention at the 
time, and to have read over this record entirely once or twice every 
year, in order to retain the images clearly in the mind. Such a plan 
would have rendered one’s retrospect far more distinct than it now is. 

9. After reading an hour or two in Shakspeare, with astonishment at 
the incomparable accuracy, and as it were tangible relief, of all his im¬ 
ages, I have walked an hour or two more in the act of trying to take on 
my mind the most perfect perceptions possible of all the surrounding 
objects and circumstances. Found, and have very often found, that set 
laborious attention is absolutely necessary to this. I take no images 
completely, involuntarily and unconsciously. It is, how’ever, sometimes 
a good w'ay of taking a wide general image, to open the eyes, and let 
them fix or wainder without precisely looking at anything (even when 
they are fixed) strongly, the while, exerting the mind to seize the w'hole 
compass at once of all that can thus come into the eye. 


MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 


235 


10. Never before so attentively observed, between where I sat and the 
light, the manner in which the drops of rain fall. They form a vast 
number of continuous lines, and thus have far less the appearance of 
multitude and confusion, than it would seem that so vast a number must 
produce. They (these lines) have some little the appearance of falling 
arrows. 

11. Observed a long time, through a small opening in a completely 
built and closed shed, a cow and calf. The cow advanced her head to 
the opening to observe me too. We looked in each other’s face, at a very 
short distance, a long time, and I indulged a kind of wondering about 
the nature of our mutual consciousness and thought of each other. (By 
the way, the mutual recognition of beings of any order, is a very strange 
and mysterious thing.) I observed the great difference between the de¬ 
gree of intelligence expressed in the eyes and looks of the cow, and in 
those of the calf. Yet vastly less difference than between the looks of a 
human infant and a mature person. 

Observed the beautiful appearance of the numerous shining flexures 
or wrinkles on the neck and shoulders of the cow. Noticed also, an ex¬ 
quisite beautiful cerulean appearance within the eyes of the calf, in the 
half-darkness (more than half) of the shed. 

Observed that the cow’s attention was much more excited (even when 
the calf did look at me), and much longer fixed and continued, than that 
of the calf. (Vide Journal, 792.) 

12. Have been a thousand times struck, and very forcibly this rnom- 
ing, with the miserable, degraded, and almost revolting appearance, of 
the visages, both in features and expression, of the lowest rank of the 
poor, especially when old. Oh, how little is made of the human species 
in dignity, refinement, knowledge, and happiness, in con)parison with what 
they mi^ht become, under the influence of good institutions—of education 
—of religion, and a state of society which should easily secure a com¬ 
petence without so much labor ! 

13. I have seen the bad effect between a husband and wife, of the one 
of them pertinaciously retaining some secret, as inviolable, which the 
other knows him or her to possess, and wishes, for the very sake of the 
pleasure ,of total union and confidence, to be simply informed of; and 
which is retained merely for the sake of showing mij independence— 
that I can keep a secret—that I have a will of my own—that I will not 
be obliged to tell a thing—or that when I have said I would not tell, I 
will stand to my word. 

My distinctest recollection of this kind is in the case of Mr. and Mrs. 

_. Mrs.-was a widow, and a number of years older than Mr. 

-. She, during their courtship, was one time going to tell him her - 

age, for the sake of frankness : he, in a spirit of gallantry, said he would 
not hear anything about her age ; he did not care about her being a little 
older than himselfshe therefore did not tell him her age. After they 
were married, perhaps a good while after (they had been married many 



236 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


years at the time I became acquainted with them), he wished, as a mere 
matter of friendly, or of slight, curiosity, to know how old she was; she 
said he had not let her tell this before, and she therefore did not choose 
to tell him now. This struck him as a somewhat unfriendly thing, and 
at the same time gave a kind of artificial importance to the secret, merely 
as being a guarded secret. These feelings naturally caused a propensity 
to recur frequently to this trifling circumstance, with various modes of 
attempting to elicit the secret; but no, she would keep her secret, that 
she would—and would defy him ever to learn what he was so curious to 
know. 

I have a number of times seen him either hurt or vexed by her silly 
obstinacy in retaining this petty mean of plaguing him when he was in¬ 
clined to be curious. This little dirty feeling of keeping an advantage 
against him ; of having something which she could defy him to obtain 
was her motive ; for nothing at all depended on her age, or on his know¬ 
ing it. How much I despised a woman who could forego one particle 
of the afTection which a kind discarding of all reserve might have excited, 
for so stupid a kind of pleasure. 

14. When we were remarking that vanity is confined to no station, 
and that there is hardly any accomplishment on which men may not 
pique themselves, Mr. Hisket told me he knew a man who used to break 
stones on the road, who was vain in a very high degree of his excellence 
in this department; he would break a load of stones with any man in 
England. He added that he had heard a chimney-sweeper indulge in 
the same boast of superiority, with an appearance of great self-com¬ 
placency. 

It is most mortifying to feel how little the clearest possible perception 
of a certain class of feelings being both irreligious and despicable, and 
the clearest possible perception when these feelings rise in the mind; 
and, in addition, an extreme contempt of these feelings, and of one’s 
self for indulging, and even for being subject to them—how little all this 
tends to prevent their rising in the mind. This is my own experience 
in respect of vanity, whether as to its pleased or its mortified feelings. 
Yet I would hope the time will come when I shall feel that these hateful 
weeds are eradicated. An accurate perception of what feelings are 
vanity, or at least will appear so if disclosed, enables one to preserve an 
appearance tolerably free from the signs of vanity; but under this man¬ 
aged appearance one has the loathsome consciousness how much of the 
vile feeling there is within. Even at this moment I feel vanity in having 
this accurate perception of what my feelings are, and how they would 
appear. I feel vanity to think, that probably if a good judge of human 
nature were casually to see these lines he would say, “ How well he 
understands himself: how far he is from the weakness of being duped by 
his own mind.”* 

* La vanite est si ancree dans le cceur de I’homme, qu’un goujat, un mar- 


I 


MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 237 

15. One has been amused sometimes, when the one of the domestic 
associates has advanced an opinion, or recited a supposed fact, which the 
other has thought extremely absurd, to see that other in haste to express 
his or her contempt of such folly of opinion, or credulity of belief, in¬ 
stead of silently sliding the circumstance or the subject out of conversa¬ 
tion, or mildly expressing that he or she cannot entirely concur in opinion 
or belief, and endeavoring to make as good a retreat as possible for the 
associate’s ignorance or weakness. I say, one has been amused; but in 
some instances one has felt a painful sympathy with the person so treated 
with scorn by an intimate relative, and before a number of witnesses, 
each of whom would have politely let pass the unfortunate remark or 

narration. Striking instances in Mr. and Mrs.-, and Dr. and Mrs. 

-. Mr. —— said, “ Oh, nonsense, nonsense, my dear.” Dr. - 

said, “ Do make a little use of your reason,” when his wife told a story 
which she had heard of Lord somebody having expended £30,000 on a 
breed of turkeys. 

16. Was told of a party of musicians, who heard with indifference 
the first long-expected account of the victory over the combined fleets, 
and seemed almost vexed at the interruption. I was disposed to applaud 
them; as a general principle, men ought to be so intent on their work 
as to deprecate every interruption, and to feel that that is what they have 
at present to mind. 

17. How glad one is this morning that one did not say some things to 
which an indignant feeling prompted last evening, and which at the time 
would have appeared to one’s judgment as pure justice; but which it is 
now very easy to see would have been partly unjust and altogether use¬ 
less, and would have caused a very awkward social embarrassment this 
morning. How long will it be before one shall attain a state of mind 
which will permit, at every instant, a luminous and impartial operation 
of the understanding ? 

18. Most forcibly struck yesterday while hearing S. G.’s account of 
the sufferings of his wife (sufferings which she has now endured several 
years, and of which she has no prospect of a termination, or even relaxa¬ 
tion, but by death), with these two considerations:—1. How little one 
realizes to thought or feeling, the sufferings of others, while one is well 
one’s self. 2. What infinite cogency ought to be felt in the duty of 
making the best and most indefatigable improvement of health and ease, 
while they continue to be granted. Oh, what a mass of guilt, on this 
account, my conscience pronounces on the review of past life. 

19. I have just crushed a moth which was hurt by flying near the 
candle. I have thus demolished a most admirable system of mechanism, 

miton, un crocheteur se vante et veut avoir ses admirateurs: et les philo. 
sophes meme en veulent. Ceux qui ecriventcentre la gloire veulent avoir la 
gloire d’avoir bien ecrit; et ceux qui le lisent veulent avoir la gloire ae 
I’avoir lu ; et moi qui ecris ceci, j’ai peut-etre cette envie ; et peut-etre que 
ceux qui le liront I’auront aussi.— Pascal, Pensees, Partie I., art. v., 3. 


238 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


motion, sensation, life. Is the being destroyed ? does no finer part sur¬ 
vive ? is this active, animated creature now consigned to eternal oblivion 
and unconsciousness ? 

20. Recollect, in some vulgar instances, the vast difference as to a 
man’s manners, between his being in the immediate .sphere of his prac- 
'ice and authority, and out of it. Remarkable instance in the captain 
of a Dublin and Liverpool packet; instance in a collier at Norton, a 
kind of foreman. He was quite an unassuming, and what is called 
sheepish creature in a parlor where I had seen him before, but he was 
all man when seen on his own proper ground; all man, not only in 
respect of his habitual companions, but in respect of the very identical 
persons whom he had been so awkward and half-timid with, in the parlor. 

21. Wliile Mr. D. was reading a chapter this morning, I had a deep 
feeling of disliking all social exercises, unless it could be with an indi¬ 
vidual or two with whom I could feel an entire reciprocation of soul. 
This was a feeling of individuality, not of impiety; and how often I 
have experienced it, even in the presence of worthy people ;—a feeling 
as if I could wish to vanish out of the room, and find myself walking in 
some lonely wood. I have a feeling of being still completely insulated, 
and that therefore the forms of a serious sociality are irksome. This is 
not felt in the public exercises of a congregation, by the official person, 
because he feels to be occupied in his own work, as an official and insu¬ 
lated individual, and not as one of the large and heterogeneous company. 
His sympathies are not seeking to mingle with all the beings who are 
present, in the same manner as they feel as if they ought to do, when it 
is only a small domestic party. 

22. I know not how to bring into intelligible description a feeling 
which I have many times been obscurely conscious of having, and par¬ 
ticularly in two or three instances of late ;—a feeling of revolting when 
I find myself coming into anything like intimate, confiding kindness (I 
have no reference to any kind of personalities whatever) with persons, 
however worthy and kind, if they are not the individual or two with 
whom my intimacy can be congenial and entire. It is a part and an 
operation of the same feeling which would recoil from the direct person¬ 
alities of love with any one that was not the absolute object of love. It 
is a noble law that (in the case of a refined and reflective mind at least) 
all the symbols that of right belong to tenderness are felt to be out of 
place with any one but a real object of tenderness. 

23. Wesley’s moderation in sleep, and his rigid constancy in risino- 
early, being mentioned in the company of Mr. Bradburn, who travelled 
with Wesley almost constantly for years, he said that Wesley generally 
slept several hours in the course of the day; that he had himself seen 
him sleep three hours together often enough. This was chiefly in his 
carriage, in which he accustomed himself to sleep on his journeys, and 
in which he slept as regularly, as easily, and as soundly, as if he had gone 
to bed. A zealous, ignorant Methodist, who considered Wesley as alto- 


MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 


239 


gether an angel, was most indignant at hearing this said by Mr. S., who 
heard Bradburn say it, and exclaimed, “ Bradburn must be a liar!” 

24. Have been looking a little while in the parish register of this 
town, which begins in the first year of Elizabeth. I felt something 
venerable, by its antiquity, even in such a dull thing as this. The im¬ 
pression is from reflecting that all these persons (those recorded, and 
those who recorded them, in the earlier part) are so long since dead ; 
and that so many of the things, and persons, and events, that we look 
back upon as long since gone, were posterior to the birth or marriage 
here recorded. 

25. Had a most beautiful .evening walk, and a diversity of views. 
From an eminence overlooked a wide extent of wood, the soft, moulded 
forms of the superficies of which were inexpressibly beautiful;—distant 
country, remote hills and horizon, setting sun, the White Horse, the 
venerable memorial of Alfred, which I looked upon with an emotion 
which few other monuments could cause. There was a most enchant¬ 
ing softness spread.over the whole view of heaven and earth, which 
gradually faded into the sombre, and then the gloom of evening. 

26. I am privileged to see one more night of surpassing beauty;—a 
moonlight night, with a gentle, unequal gale, in an August so temperate, 
and so wet with delicious rains, that the intense green of the earth is 
perceptible by this moonlight. I feel an earnest wish to seize such a 
view of nature, and fix it in my mind, even for ever. It is a very noble 
luxury to see such aspects of solemn beauty; and I will not be ungrate¬ 
ful nor neglectful. 

27. Have been reading a most awful account of an eruption of Vesu¬ 
vius ; how far correct is one of the feelings caused by this description ? 
namely this ; a feeling as if the actions of man, in a moral view, and in 
the sight of the Creator, could scarcely be of any manner of conse¬ 
quence ; the creature as a physical being appearing so inconceivably 
insignificant, so despicable, so much on a level with the smallest reptile, 
when he and his powers, &.C., are placed in thought beside these enor¬ 
mous natural phenomena and powers. 

But the feeling cannot be right when it goes the length, as I feel it 
inclined to do, of annihilating all difference between virtue and vice, in 
the way of asking, What signifies it what thoughts, as they are called, 
this despicable animalcule entertains in what he calls his mind ? what 
signifies it into what articulations he may form the trivial sound which 
he calk his voice, in uttering what he calls speech ? what can it signify 
in what manner he uses his insect limbs in what he calls action, and 
sometimes conduct 7 what signifies all the trivial action, thought, speech, 
and existence itself of such an atom, that he should deem himself under 
some sublime law of accountableness to the infinite Spirit, and that 
there should be an awful distinction between moral good and evil in 
such an agent ? 

At the same time how prodigiously it would modify one’s manner of 


240 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


thinking, on almost all subjects, if it were possible to retain strongly in 
the mind the grand class of ideas, and that standard, that kind of general 
measure for perceiving the magnitude of all objects, which would result 
from the mind having taken its pitch and level, so to speak, in this ele¬ 
vated region. (How \dlely this is expressed!) I mean simply to say, 
that the mind, while expanded and elevated by the contemplation of 
these grand subjects, perceives many things to be little, which at other 
times it views as important; and if it could be kept habitually in this 
state of expansion and elevation, it would acquire a grand standard 
according to which it would perceive, and measure, and estimate, all 
these objects. In its expressions and representations, therefore, it would 
express as trivial many things which, for want of this high standard, it 
regards and speaks of as great and important. Yet those who read or 
heard its sentiments would not feel coincident, because they would not 
have in their minds this grand standard for measuring little and great. 
But to a great extent, truth and justice (intellectual justice) require this 
to be done. A man should, as far as he can, make his standard of the 
proportions of things the same as the standard of the universe. But 
alas! what a despicable atom, and almost infinitely less than an atom, he 
appears in this very attempt of thinking according to the grand scale of 
proportions. 

But still, things may be great or little, with respect to the wants, inte¬ 
rests, and happiness of man, though they be all inexpressibly and equally 
little and trivial with respect to the universe, and as measured on the 
degrees of its grand scale or standard. This is the standard according to 
which w’e must chiefly think. Yet still something of this kind should be 
done. 

Quote one of my own sentences,—We have often talked of this 
bold quality (decision of character), and feel its extreme importance,^' 
—“ extreme importance !” Vain words !—extreme importance in what 
determines the movements of a microscopical tadpole, called 7nan! 
Such will be the just remark while applying the grand standard. But 
then, hy the standard of human interests, which substantially after all 
must be the standard chiefly referred to and used, by this standard of our 
own, the thing is important. 

Perhaps after all, there is but little real analogy between the physical 
and the moral standard of great and little ; perhaps not enough to war¬ 
rant our drawing from the one any measures by which t« judge of the 
things belonging to the other. Taken as a mere physical agent, man, 
compared to the physical powers and grandeur of a volcano is infinitely 
little and despicable ; but it is not in his physical powers and being 
that man finds his true value ; he is an intellectual and moral agent, and 
if the phenomena and qualities of this moral and intellectual being could 
possibly be justly compared by means, if it existed, of any intermediate 
principle and common measure of proportions, with the grand physical 
phenomena of an earthquake, a stonny ocean, or a volcano, those moral 


MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 


241 


phenomena might prove much the more grand.* Perhaps, according to 
that Divine standard, which is the ultimate abstraction of all relations, 
analogies, measures, and proportions, and in which the laws and princi¬ 
ples of the natural world and those of the moral, are resolved in the same 
(are in their original undivided essence), the grandeur of a virtue may¬ 
be as great, or much greater than that of a volcano, the mischief of 
a vice as great as that of an earthquake. 

While reading this tremendous account of Vesuvius (and as long 
as it is forcibly remembered), how contemptible appears my own com¬ 
parison of the valor and anger of Homer’s heroes to Vesuvius.f Achilles 
like Vesuvius ! ! How impossible to have made such a comparison, if I 
had composed those sentences while under the full impression of the 
account I have just now read, of the awful phenomena of one of the 
eruptions of Vesuvius (in Dr. Gregory’s Economy of Nature). But yet, 
is it absurd in regard lo the ideas of the reader, who probably has not in 
his mind, any more than the writer had in his, a grand habitual idea of 
the volcano ? to him it will he hut strong enough, and he will feel no 
extravagance. Whereas, had some much inferior thing been mentioned 
(as a furnace for instance), it would have appeared quite feeble, and 
almost despicable, as a parallel to Achilles and Diomedes. We do 
injustice to almost everything we mention ; our ideas are infinitely less 
(if it is any sublime object at least) than the thing itself. 

* L’homme n’est qu’un roseau le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un 
roseau pensant. II ne f'aut pas que I’univers entier s’arme pour I’ecraser. 
Une vapeur, une goutte d’eau suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand I’univers 
I’ecraserait, I’homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu’il 
sait qu’il meurt; et I’avantage que I’univers a sur lui, I’univers n’en sait 
rien. Ainsi toute notre dignite consiste dans la pensee. C’est de la qu’il 
faut nous relever, non de I’espace et de la duree. Travaillons done a bien 
penser ; voila la principe de la morale.— Pascal, Pensees, Partie I., art. 
iv., 6. 

t “ Let this susceptible youth, after having mingled and burned in ima¬ 
gination among heroes, whose valor and anger flame like Vesuvius, who 
wade in blood, trample on dying foes, and hurl defiance against earth and 
heaven ; let him be led into the company of Jesus Christ and his disciples, 
as displayed by the evangelists, with whose narration, I will suppose, he 
is but slightly acquainted before.” — Essay on the Aversion of Men of 
Taste, to Evangelical Religion. Letter V. 


17 


242 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CHAPTER V. 

RESIDENCE AT BOURTON ON-THE-WATER-VISIT TO FROME-ECLEC¬ 
TIC REVIEW-BIRTH OF IIIS SON-EXCURSION INTO NORTH WALES 

-VISIT TO BRISTOL AND FROME—HALl’s PREACHING-DEATH OF 

HIS PARENTS-DOMESTIC HABITS-REMOVAL TO DOWNEND. 

1808-1817. 

Mr. Foster’s marriage took place in May, 1808. In one of 
liis earliest letters after this event, addressed to a highly esteemed 
friend* at Frome, he says, “ If the distance of some miles and 
some months could obliterate from my own mind all regard for 
persons with whom I have passed so many agreeable and animated 
hours, I ought to conclude, that I am myself no longer remem¬ 
bered with kindness at the Iron-Gates, or at the cottage ; but as I 
experience no such effect of time and distance, I will not let my¬ 
self believe it is experienced by my friends, especially as probably 
less alteration has taken place in their circumstances than in 
mine; unless, indeed, my good friend Miss S. has by this time 
been (where I have repeatedly warned you, there was danger of 
her going) to Gretna Green. In tiiis last case, I fear that she at 
least will have quite forgotten me, whereas I, after an adventure 
somewhat of this kind, have a very faithful and friendly remem¬ 
brance of her. 1 seem to have so little more to tell about myself 
in consequence of the change of situation caused by that adven¬ 
ture, that I clearly perceive those adventurers who fill large 
volumes with their own story, must make very large use of fiction ; 
and that a book which I have just been reading, written by a very 
plain-sailing gentleman of the name of Patrick Gass, who nar¬ 
rates a grand voyage of discovery, across the continent of North 
America to the Pacific Ocean, and back again, in a rather thin 
octavo, is the very standard for all, who in relating their own 
adventures are determined to tell nothing but what is new, and 
nothing but what is true. For myself, indeed, if I will tell nothing 

* Mrs. John Sheppard, August 3, 1808^ 


BOURTON-ON-THE-WATER. 


243 


but what is true, I must tell nothing at all that is new, for as to 
saying, that I am happy in the changed situation, that is but the 
same thing that a tolerable number of millions of men have said of 
themselves when they had been married hardly three months. 

“ If I were a young man, I should very likely he saying with a 
prompt and sanguine confidence,—‘ Well, and why may not a man 
who can be happy with an associate three months, assure himself 
of a similar happiness, if they should live three years, or even 
thirty years V But I am old enough to be well aware how many 
people who are wiser than myself, would laugh at the romantic 
cast of such a presumption, and shall therefore keep the notion to 
myself. 

“ My habits in this new residence are sober, quiet, and recluse, 
to the last degree. I will answer for it, there is not a mouse that 
haunts any bank, or brake, or barn in this county, that is seldomer 
seen than I am, or that runs more instantly into its hiding-place, 
if it should happen to meet any eye, even that of a cat. My life 
when at Wall-bridge was perfect dissipation, as to the article of 
visiting, compared with what it is now ; but I do not, therefore, 
insinuate it is a life of industry : excepting a quantity of reading, 
there has been but a miserably small portion of work done since 
I came hither, and since I entered the house in which I am now 
writing; I am vowing, however, and almost beginning to mend.” 

“ Nobody in the village,” he tells another friend,* “ except the 
sick or lame, has kept so well at home, as we have done the last 
ten weeks. We almost literally go no whither, but to meeting on 
the Sunday, and a short walk into the fields sometimes in the 
evenings of the other days. I believe we are thought the strangest 
people in the place, and it is very convenient to me they should 
think so. But they think this stay-at-home fondness, this being so 
satisfied with each other, will in due time have had its day, and 
leave us to wish for the assistance of our neighbors to help us drag 
on the tediousness of life. They are not, however, apprised, what 
a vast number of quarto and octavo books there are yet on the 
shelf, or likely to come there. Till a tolerable share of these are 
conquered, we must make shift to endure each other’s company 
alone, as well as we can.” In another letter,f he describes the 
village as being “ the one place in the world where nothing can 
be said to happen in the whole course of the year; nothing that is 
worth telling at tho distance of five miles off.” “ This,” he adds, 

* To Mrs. Gowing, Aug. 1, 1808. f July 3, 1809. 


244 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


is perhaps a very good thing to say of a place, when one considers 
how much that is remarkably bad takes place in most other towns 
and villages. To have nothing remarkable to say of the events 
of a place, where there are a good many people, is surely some 
proof that Satan is not so active there, as in some other of his 
haunts. There are several places round at no great distance, 
where a far greater number of notable incidents are constantly 
occurring to help out the talk and scandal of society. Bourton is 
hardly good or bad enough to make it worth while that half a 
dozen sentences should be uttered or written about it.” 

Mr. Hughes spent two days at Bourton in August, and then, 
accompanied by his friend, set oft' for Cheltenham. “After stay¬ 
ing about a day,” Foster tells his parents,* “ we walked to Glouces¬ 
ter (nine miles), and went by coach to Thornbury, eleven miles 
from Bristol. It was near the end of the week ; Hughes was to 
be in Bristol on the Sunday, and I proposed going with him, but 
on the Saturday it was heard, that a good old minister, who was 
to have come to preach at Thornbury on the following day, had 
suddenly died that morning. I therefore stayed and preached 
twice. I had not preached there before for perhaps eight years.f 
On the Sunday evening I walked to Bristol with two of the Bris¬ 
tol students, one of whom is nephew to Mr. Hall, and of the same 
name.J He had been lately to see Mr. Hall, and I did not fail to 
make many inquiries about him, as I have also done from other 
quarters. As to his mind, he has been perfectly well a long time, 
but his health is greatly oppressed, by an almost continual pain in 
his side and back, to which he has been much subject almost all 

his life.He is said to preach incomparable sermons still, 

and is likely to remain at Leicester, a very dull place, by no 
means adapted to such a man, who ought to be in some one of the 
three or four principal towns in England. In Bristol, I saw Mr. 

Bogue, Di;. Ryland, and others. I was two or three days 

about Downend, and was kept in almost continual motion, in order 
to call on each of the persons whose houses I used to visit when 
a resident there. Most of them I found as well as when I lived 
there, though some of the aged persons are declining, and a few 
are dead. I went with Hughes to Bath, where he preached 
on a week day evening for Mr. Jay, in whose company we passed 

* Sept. 1, 1803. 

t Probably the visit mentioned in the Journal, No. 764, v. p. 150. 

X The late Rev. John Keene Hall, M.A., of Kettering 




VISIT TO FROM£. 


245 


a number of hours. He retains quite undiminished his extreme 
popularity, and his inflexible sobriety and excellence. . . . Hughes 
accompanied me to Frome, though he was not able to stay there 
more than half a day: he left me and returned to Bristol. His 
health is now firm ; his mind is active, and he is kept in almost 
continual exertion by his concern in the Bible Society, the Tract 
Society, the Hibernian Society, the Surrey Mission, and various 
and frequent preaching, besides his regular employment on the 
Sunday. His religious opinions and devotional habits are quite 
established, his talents have attained their full maturity, and, both 
from nature and constant exercise, he has very great facility and 

quickness of thought and expression. 

“ At Frome I was received with the most animated kindness, 
both among the richer and poorer class of my acquaintance,—a 
kindness to which I could not make an adequate return in the way 
of giving much of my company, as I had determined not to stay 
more than three days. I felt the propriety, even as a matter of 
appearance, of not being like a rambler from home, besides the 
impatience of affection to be again with my dear domestic asso¬ 
ciate. I returned to her at the time I had determined, found her 
well, and was welcomed with inexpressible tenderness. The feli¬ 
city of thus rejoining her seemed to me to exceed even the joy of 
being first united to her. Nearly four months have now elapsed 
since that time, and on both sides the affectionate complacency 
has very sensibly increased. We both every day express our 
gratitude to Heaven for having given us to each other : and we 
hope that it will continue a cause of the most lively gratitude as 
long as we live, and also in a state after death. I most entirely 
believe that no man on earth has a wife more fondly affectionate, 
more anxious to promote his happiness, or more dependent for her 
own on his tenderness for her. In the greatest number of 
opinions, feelings, and concerns, we find ourselves perfectly 
agreed ; and when anything occurs on which our judgments and 
dispositions differ, we find we can discuss the subject without 
violating tenderness, or in the least losing each other’s esteem, 
even for a moment. Greater trials of our mutual affection and 
respect than any that have yet occurred will undoubtedly arise in 
the course of life, if it is considerably protracted ; but the experi- 
ment thus far has given us a stronger confidence in the perpetuity 
of tenderness and harmony than it was possible for us to have, 
previously to any experiment at all.” 



246 


LIFE OF JOHi\ FOSTER. 


Foster’s connection with the Eclectic Review has been men¬ 
tioned in the preceding chapter. From the period of his settle¬ 
ment at Frome, he became one of the most frequent contributors 
to that journal, whicli for several years was the only one in this 
country that combined the advocacy of ‘‘ spiritual Christianity” 
with liberal views on social and political questions. At its com¬ 
mencement churchmen and dissenters were united in its support, 
on the understanding that the points at issue between them were 
not to be brought under discussion. It soon, however, became 
evident that a neutrality which would exclude from animadver¬ 
sion not only the abstract question of religious establishments, but 
all abuses, past and present, which might attach to our social in¬ 
stitutions, would narrow the freedom of discussion to a degree that, 
in a nation so practical as ours, would deprive the Review of all 
interest to persons holding decided opinions. Against this equivo¬ 
cal and undignified position which even then, and still more in 
later years, would be so unsatisfactory to earnest minds, Mr. Fos¬ 
ter made frequent and pointed remonstrances, which, combined 
with the tone of several of his articles, contributed to a settlement 
of the journal on a Nonconformist basis. In a letter to the editor, 
after alluding to certain clergymen’ who were concerned in the 
management of the Review, he says, “ It is utterly impossible to 
keep on terms with them, I am persuaded, but at the cost of in¬ 
juring the character of the Review for anything like spirit and 
independence. You may be very sure they will not only require 
that we do not condemn an establishment, or the English estab¬ 
lishment, in the abstract, but that we do not presume to touch the 
abominable corruptions of the actual condition of that church j not 
only that we do not declare against what is called the British con¬ 
stitution, but also that we be very respectful to the actual govern¬ 
ment and administration, whatever it may be.” “ I meant to have 
added,” he writes again, “to the end of Macdiarmid,* some good 
sentences in continuation and conclusion of the remark that our 
being pledged to let alone the question of the Establishment is not 
a pledge to let vile men and vile measures go free because they 
have belonged, or may at any time belong to the established 
church. This would be to make and acknowledge the church, 
just as it was literally in popish times, the asylum of miscreants, 
who had only just to get within its walls to laugh at all the agents 

* Vide Contributions, &c., vol. i., pp. 224-225, or Eclectic Review, 
October and November, 1808. 


ECLECTIC REVIEW. 


247 


of justice. But this palpable distinction will probably not be ad¬ 
mitted by any bigb-churcb readers, that may condescend to notice 
the Review, and therefore either they must be disregarded, or the 
Review must shift to live in a state of miserable subjugation, de¬ 
spised by those who must be, after all, the resource of anything 
that dares to be free and to promote freedom. For it is to me as 
clear as the sunshine in which I am writing, that nothing of an 
useful v/ork of this kind will ever succeed that does not substan¬ 
tially please the dissenters. And this may be done without the 
slightest approach toward anything like forward declaration in 
their favor ; but^it absolutely never can be done by a trembling, 
reverential forbearance on all subjects relating to the corruptions, 
and tyranny, and wicked men involved in the history and prac¬ 
tice of the church and state. There absolutely must be some¬ 
thing to express an abhorrence of star-chambers, St. Bartholo¬ 
mews, and the principle of non-resistance. And besides the 
question of policy, should not a work, which pretends to be the 
free and absolutely independent advocate of truth and justice, be 
anxious to lend a hand against some of the most pernicious evils 
that ever infested the world ? Of what diminutive consequence 
is the correction of any mere literary errors and faults, compared 
with a manly resistance of those notions and that spirit which 
have made prisoners, wanderers, exiles, or martyrs, of the best and 
wisest of mankind ; which have sanctioned the despotism of the 
vilest governments, and which still are strongly operating in the 
same way, even in this country ? Look at France, the whole 
intellectual being and discipline of which is now submitted to a 
system of instruction wholly prescribed by a tyrant; everything 
should be done in every country, not yet totally enslaved, to avert 
so melancholy a destiny, towards which we have, of late years, 
been virtually very fast approaching in this country. If the 
^ supporters ’ have no hope of supporting the Eclectic Review, 
without a sacrifice of this free and courageous quality, let them 
lay down their thankless undertaking, and let some other men be 
sought to undertake a really bold and free work which should 
in its prospectus declare, in so many words, that the Bible is to 
be held -sacred, but nothing else on earth ;—that all subjects 
whatever are considered as free for discussion ;—and that all sys¬ 
tems, institutions, and practices, as being merely of human 
authority, are fully open to the exercise of human reason. The 
‘ supporters ’ may hobble on a while under their weight, but they 


248 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


may depend upon it, that without gaining the cordial approbation 
of dissenters and independent thinkers, they will sink at last; for 
as to their church friends, they will never help them on without 
some more settled and distinct pledges and proofs of servitude 
and obsequiousness. 

“ What a stupid thing it was to begin a thing on such a plan! 
They wisely thought, I suppose, that the whole business of pre¬ 
serving neutrality was confined just to two or three bare questions, 
and that these could evidently be easily avoided. They could 
not see that this question of neutrality would necessarily extend 
to ten thousand things in the course of general reasoning and cri¬ 
ticism; that it would interfere in all works of history, of political 
economy, of biography, of theories of government, of political 
and ecclesiastical controversy, of missionary designs, of educa¬ 
tion, of rights of conscience, and of discussion of present parties, 
measures, and expectations.” 

When Mr. Foster relinquished the pastoral office at Frome, it 
was with the painful apprehension that his labors as a Christian 
minister were finally closed ; but, within little more tlian a year 
after his marriage, the morbid affection in his throat had so 
far diminished as to allow of his once more speaking in public. 
“ During the summer and earlier autumn,” he says,* “ I preached 
every Sunday here and there, and generally twice ; the last month 
or two has not been quite so busy, though I have probably never 
had two unemployed Sundays together. The every Sunday ser¬ 
vice recalled somewhat of the complaint, which expelled me from 
a regular pulpit. I am become accustomed to pulpits, desks, stools, 
blocks, and all sorts of pedestal elevations.” At a later period 
he informs his mother, “ I am returned from another expedition 
to preach, at a considerable distance, which has taken up several 
days. Since I wrote to you last, I have gone to preach at two 
villages or towns, where I had never been before. On reckoning 
up the number of places in the circuit of neighborhood at which 
I have preached since I came to reside here, I find it amounts to 
Jourteen —several of them within three or four miles of this vil¬ 
lage, and several of them as far off as twelve or fourteen miles. 
Many of these are small congregations, and several of them con¬ 
sisting chiefly of poor people. . . lam pleased so far with hav¬ 
ing the means of doing any small degree of good, and feel it an 
advantage that I am in circumstances to enable me to preach for 

* To Mr. Hughes, Nov, 21, 1809. 


BIRTH OF HIS SON. 


249 


nothing. This circumstance gives some additional weight to a 
man’s religious instructions, especially in some of the ignorant 
places where the people are industriously taught by the clergy, 
and other enemies of the dissenters, that there is some self-in¬ 
terested object in view, in all this busy activity in going about to 
preach. I everywhere meet with civility, decent behavior, and 
often very friendly attention. ... It must be acknowledged in 
behalf of the clergy themselves, that they do not attempt in any 
active manner to thwart or incommode us. They let us alone, 
except now and then railing a little at us from their pulpits, and 
in their convivial meetings. And in this we hear that the one or 
two of a more serious stamp are not behind-hand with the rest, 
disliking dissenters as such, just as much as the more profligate 
ones dislike the dissenters as I’eligious. And indeed, all over 
England, I believe that in general the evangelical clergy are 
found very great bigots, with here and there a rare exception.” 

Foster’s domestic life, so full of satisfaction in its chief relation, 
acquired additional interest by the birth of a son, in January, 
1810. He acknowledges the congratulations of one of his friends 
on the event in the following terms: “You have my thanks for. 
all the good wishes and congratulatory expressions in which you 
have manifested your benevolence. I am willing to adopt, as far 
as 1 possibly can, your opinion, that it is the parents’ fault if the 
children are not causes of satisfaction, ultimately, rather than 
vexation. In the case in question, there will in all probability 
be a more systematical, and a more agreeing and co-operating en¬ 
deavor to prevent evil, and communicate good, than in the great 
majority of instances; and indeed this may be, and no great 
merit neither, for education always appears to me as the one thing 
which, taken generally, is the most vilely managed on earth. If 
the fellow turns out good, I shall not so much mind about his be- 
ing extra clever. It is goodness that the world is wretched for 
wanting; and if all were good, none would need to be able. 1 
am willing to hope, that by the time he comes to be a man, if 
that should ever be, the world will be a little better than it is at 
present, and will have made a perceptible advance toward that 
state in which talents will be little wanted. It is at the same time 
needless to say, that it would be gratifying that a son should have 
some qualifications for being an agent in the happy process. 
Physically, the chap is deemed, I understand, as promising as his 
neighbors. My wife is still extremely well for the time, and 1 


250 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


hope will soon be restored to her full health and strength. It is 
she that I care fifty times more about than I should about any in¬ 
fant. It is only by time and habit that a young child becomes in 
any great degree interesting to a man, especially a man never in 
the least accustomed to such children. The young fellow has 
not yet been thought worth calling by any name. My sisters-in 
law do not approve of either Adam or Cain, and one does not like 
to expose one’s self to a veto a third time. If he is lucky enough 
to get any name at last, I should not wonder if it were to be, 
according to your injunction, John.” To another friend he says, 
“ Though I like female children better than boys, I am better 
pleased that tliis is a boy, because a boy, if he grows up with 
good faculties and good principles, can be made more extensively 
an agent than a female of even the same faculties and principles; 
and also it appears but too probable, the age we are entering on 
may be a very rugged one, and such that benevolence might 
almost wish that there might be nothing but men to suffer its ca¬ 
lamities.” 

In the summer of 1812, Foster made an excursion into North 
Wales, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Stokes of Worcester, and 
two other friends. “ Ever since the visit to Bristol and Frome,” 
he tells Mr. Hughes, “ I have been treading my little quiet routine 
of reading, light criticism, and village preaching,’*with most 
exemplary uniformity, with one capital exception indeed, of 
superlative interest, an excursion through North Wales. The 
delight with which I contemplated the magnificent scenery was 
ardent almost up to the degree of poetry, even notwithstanding a 
most incommodious lameness which I incurred on one of the 
earliest days, and retained to the last .from a formidable crush of 
my foot by rolling a stone among the mountains. The only bad 
effect that now remains is a certain debility, which will continue 
for a while, probably, to incapacitate me for any very long v/alks, 
if I were inclined, or had occasion to attempt them. The impres¬ 
sion I retain from what I saw, creates a decided intention, should 
life and health be prolonged, to see these sublime objects yet 
again, and to take longer time to explore some of the most interest¬ 
ing of the localities, especially the region round Snowdon, which 
imperial eminence I ascended at midnight, and saw the rising of 

the sun from its summit.This excursion was undertaken 

(by me) really and truly much more with a view to diversify 



hall’s preaching. 


251 


my ideas, and lay in some stock in the imagination, than from 
any calculation of the mere pleasure of beholding.”* 

In August, 1815, he visited Bristol and Frome, accompanied 
by Mrs. Foster. Referring to his friends at the latter place, he 
says, “ I revisited at their houses a number of the good people I 
had once preached to, especially the poor people, who manifested 
a lively pleasure in seeing me again. A strange number are 
dead of those whom I knew when I lived there. The oldest and 
most estimable, however, of my former friends there still lives, 
and looks well, and is very cheerful, in her eightieth year. She 
is a person of the rich and what is called genteel class, but of 
most extraordinary piety and beneficence. 1 hope she may yet 
survive a few years, a blessing to the poor, and an example to 
the rich. In that town the disposition for hearing about religion 
is increasing, in a degree beyond anything I have known else¬ 
where. There must be at least two thousand more attendants at 
places of worship than there were at the time I was in the town; 
and even at that time I considered it as surpassing, in the propor¬ 
tion of inhabitants so attending, any other place within my know¬ 
ledge.The grand attraction at Bristol was the preaching 

of Mr. Hall, who happened to be on a visit there, and preached 
three Sundays. I contrived to hear him several times, and was 
glad to have the opportunity, as I had never heard him but twice 

or three times before.The last sermon I heard him preach, 

which dwelt much on the topic of livbig in vain, made a more 
powerful impression on my mind than, I think, any one I ever 
heard. And this was not simply from its being the most eloquent 
sermon, unquestionably, that I ever heard, or probably ever shall 
hear, but from the solemn and alarming truth which it urged and 

pressed on the conscience, with the force of a tempest.I 

suppose every intelligent person has the impression, in hearing 
him, that he surpasses every other preacher,probably in the whole 
world. In the largest congregation there is an inconceivable 
stillness and silence while he is preaching, partly indeed owing 
to his having a weak, low voice, though he is a strong, large-built 
man ; but very much owing to that commanding power of his 
mind, which holds all other minds in captivity, while within 
reach of his voice. He has no tricks of art and oratory, no studied 
gesticulations, no ranting, no pompous declamation. His elo- 


To Mr. Hughes, September 1, 1812. 





252 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


quence is the mighty power of spirit, throwing out a rapid series 
of thoughts—explanatory, argumentative, brilliant, pathetic, or 
sublime—sometimes all these together. And the whole manner 
is simple, natural, grave, sometimes cool, often impetuous and 
ardent. He seems always to have a complete dominion over the 
subject on which he is dwelling, and over the subjects, on every 
side, to which he adverts for illustration. He has the same pre¬ 
eminent power in his ordinary conversation as in his preaching. 
What is best in the account, the power of religion is predominant 
over every other power in his mind. A devotional spirit is very 
conspicuous in his religious exercises, and is said, by those who 
know him best, to be the habitual character of his mind. I was 
in his company a number of times.” 

It has been already noticed that Mr. Foster’s father died in 
1814. “Before an advanced period of old age, it was at the 
beginning of each new year his earnest desire, as far as compati¬ 
ble with submission to the divine will, that it might be his last ; 
so that I have no doubt,” his son observed to a friend, “ that he 
entered on twenty successive years with this desire expressed in 
prayer.” Mrs. Foster survived her husband to the close of 1816, 
and during this interval of widowhood, her son not only, as he had 
uniformly done during his father’s lifetime, contributed liberally 
to lessen the pressure of outward circumstances, but by writing 
more frequently than before, endeavored with the most sedulous 
affection to cheer her loneliness, and alleviate the increasing 
infirmities of age. Foster’s last visit to his parents was in the 
autumn of 1801, and at that time he said of them, “ they fear not 
death, nor need to fear it; for they are eminently ripe for heaven. 
I have never met with a piety more entire and sublime.” 

During his residence at Bourton, his family was increased by 
the birth of five children, of whom two died in infancy. Some of 
his private habits, and the tenor of his domestic life, will be best 
understood from the following sketches by himself in his letters to 
his mother. “ I have not yet begun my usual winter-practice of 
rising before the beginning of day-light in the morning ; but it is 
quite time to resume it, and I intend to do so to-morrow morning. 
I shall also begin to have a fire in this cold garret. All this 
dozen years I have always done everything about my own fire 
myself; and I believe nobody can much excel me in that busi- 
ness; most certainly no one can in the art of keeping a fire alive 
with the least consumption of fuel. This is a very requisite art, 


DOMESTIC HABITS*. 


253 


for coals are very dear here, being all brought from a great dis¬ 
tance. Tiiere is therefore no such thing as what you call raking 
the fire and keeping it in all night. We have always to light 
anew in the morning, by means of a tinder-box, and a handful of 
shavings and slicks. It is literallyjscarcely more than a handful 
that I make use of for making mine. Our coals, however, are 
good. But in burning, they never, like yours, acquire a sort of 
pitchy softness, and run into large lumps of cinder. 

“ I wish I could perform every other part of my employments 
as well as 1 can make a fire; and'that I had ever learnt to be as 
economical of time as of coals. But this I have not yet learnt, 
during all these years that my time has been passing away. I 
have it still to learn practically, now that so much less a portion 
of my life, in all probability, remains behind, than that which is 
expended. I am most deeply mortified to think the case should 
be so, and sometimes am tempted to despair of its being mended. 
But despair cannot be any yart of my duty. I still must hope, and 
resolve, and pray, and endeavor. 

“ Hardly any man has his time so much at his command in one 
sense, as I have ;—no visiting scarcely—very little travelling— 
very little letter-writing—very little business to transact. I 
should have made, under such circumstances, ten times greater 
acquisitions and improvements than I have ; and should have 
performed much more .that should turn to the account of public 
utility, of one sort or another. I am often at once grateful and 
ashamed in comparing my lot with that of many men, who would 
be glad to attend to intellectual pursuits, but are harassed with 
business, and worn down with cares and vexations ; or have some 
one uniform, constant, severely laborious employment to attend 
to,—for example, teaching a school ; which, at former periods of 
my life, I thought of as likely to be my own employment for per¬ 
haps a great part of my life. Even preaching is a much less 
laborious thing in my way of performing it, than it is in the case of 
a settled minister, who has to preach three or four times a-week, 
and habitually to the same people. My preaching is here and 
there, and for the most part in places where I do not much mind 
regular preparation, but talk three quarters of an hour to the 
people, in any strain of thought that I can call up at the time. I 
have oftener than not, however, a small piece of paper under my 
eyes, because I have so wretched a memory. But I take no such 


254 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER 


aid in preaching in two or three of the villages on a Sunda}! 
evening. 

“ In one way and another, I have all manner of books at my 
command, and can see newspapers every day. By such means 
I have been enabled, in a measure, to avoid the disadvantages 
otherwise inevitable in such an out-of-the-world situation. I 
habitually see as much as five or six of the periodical I'eviews. 
So that I can learn nearly whatever I want to be informed of, as 
to the course of literature, and of the general affairs of society. 

I even sometimes feel that too much time is spent in this kind of 
reading. Very much less would not, however, have well suf¬ 
ficed for the pursuit of that sort of business which has so conside¬ 
rably occupied me now for many years. 

My wife and the brats are still well. Those brats are just 
now making a great noise, and running about to make themselves 
warm, in the house under me. 1 have noticed the curious fact 
of the difference of the effect of what other people’s children do 
and one’s own. In the situations I have formerly been in, any 
great noise and racket of children would have extremely incom¬ 
moded me, if I wanted to read, think, or write. But I never 
mind, as to any such matter of convenience, how much din is 
made by these brats, if it is not absolutely in the room where I 
am at work. When I am with them I am apt to make them, and 
join in making them, make a still bigger tumult and noise ; so 
that their mother sometimes complains that we all want whipping 
together. As to liking freaks and vivacity, I do not feel myself 
much older than I was twenty years since. I have a great dis¬ 
like to ail stiff, and formal, and unnecessary gravity ; if it were 
not so, I should be to children quite an old man, and could have 
no easy companionship with them. It must be a great evil for 
parents to have with their children an immoveable, puritanical 
solemnity, especially when the disproportion in age is so unusu¬ 
ally great as in my case. But I feel no tendency to this ; of 
course, to avoid it is no matter of effort or self-denial. 

“ I shall not, after some little time longer, know well what to 
do with John. One shall be very reluctant to send him to school 
at a distance from home, wherever that may be ; and yet there is 
no doing much good, except in extraordinary cases, in the way 
of regular pursuit of learning, without the advantage of compa¬ 
nions of a boy’s own age, and the systematic employment which 
cannot be enforced anywhere so effectually as in a school. I am 


DOMESTIC HABITS. 


255 


hoping we may remove to some situation where there may be a 
good school just at hand, that he might attend during the day, 
and return home at night.”* 

‘‘ I am sitting alone in my long garret, in which I spend a 
considerable part of every day, excepting the days on which I 
go out to preach. Here I have a little fire, and, excepting along 
the middle of the floor, the room is crowded and loaded with 
papers and books, intermingled with dust that is never swept 
away. Along this middle space of the floor, I walk backward 
and forward, as much as several hours every day ; for 1 cannot 
make much of thinking and composing without walking about, a 
habit that I learnt early in my musing life. Formerly I used to 
walk about the fields for hours together, indulging imaginations 
and reflections, thinking of myself and innumerable other objects, 
reviewing past life, and forming plans or vows for the future. 
Since I came to this village, I have walked in the fields in this 
way comparatively but little; this garret has served me instead. 
I have been more in habits of such kind of study as required to 
have books and pens at hand. But, nevertheless, I probably 
walk not much less than I did when it was in the open air. It 
would be a marvellous number of miles, if it could be computed 
how for I have walked on this floor. It would be a length that 
would reach to the other side of the globe. If all my musing 
walks, since I was twenty years old, could be computed together, 
it would not unlikely be a length that would go several times 
round the globe, 

“ I seem as if I could hardly believe that eight years, within a 
few weeks, have really passed away, since I began to frequent 
this same garret—a time which I can look back to as if it were 
but a few months since. This space bears a very material and 
serious proportion to a whole life of moderate length. And then, 
too, when it happens to be, as it has been in my case, the meri¬ 
dian portion of life, the part at which life attains its highest matu¬ 
rity, and is preceding, at no great distance, the period of decline, 
it may be regarded as a portion of higher value than perhaps the 
same length of time in any other part of life; unless we except 
tlie space between the ages of twenty and thirty. Thus regard¬ 
ing it as immensely valuable, and now all past, I cannot but feel 
some very solemn reflections and emotions, in which regret bears 


* To his Mother, Nov., 1815. 


256 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


a very prominent share. Conscience admonishes me to how much 
more effectual purpose these years might have been expended. 
Gratitude to the divine forbearance and the divine bounty claims 
also a large part in the sentiments with which I ought to dwell 
on the review. Whatever time is yet to come before death shall 
shut up the account, may the divine grace enabfe me to improve 
it in a far nobler manner; so that, if\ should live another eight 
years, I may at the end of it be able to say, with animated grati¬ 
tude, ‘ how much more valuable a portion of my life this has 
practically been than the preceding eight years, or indeed than 
any preceding portion of my life.’ I do humbly trust, that the 
more or less time to come will really be of this improved charac¬ 
ter, in whatever place that time may be spent.”* 

Towards the close of 1817 Mr. Foster left Bourton, and be¬ 
came once more a resident and stated preacher at Downend. 
“ It is not without very great hesitation,” he informs his friend 
Mr. Stokes, ‘‘ that I have come to the conclusion to accept an 
invitation to preach regularly at Downend, four miles from Bris¬ 
tol ; a place where I was stationed in the same service as much 
as fourteen or sixteen years since; but where it is striking to 
observe how many persons, who then formed a part of the con¬ 
gregation, do not appear in it now, nor in any other on earth. 
Those that do remain profess to have retained a friendly recollec¬ 
tion of me during the protracted interval, and for several of them 
I have always retained a most sincere kindness. 

“ There is a small proportion of highly-cultivated individuals, 
contrasted, however, so decidedly with the perfectly rustic state 
and character of the great majority, as to constitute an incommo¬ 
dious kind of congregation, since what would seem requisite to 
please the few, would be of little or no use to the greater number. 
The style of preaching must, however, at all events, be endea¬ 
vored to be adapted to the latter. Indeed, the circumstance that 
has decided mp to enter on the undertaking is precisely my hav¬ 
ing had, for a good while, the design of trying what may be prac¬ 
ticable in the way of adapting sermons to such rustics; sermons 
made on a plan of combining perfect simplicity and intelligible¬ 
ness, even a degree of obviousness, with what shall have as much 
as possible of novelty or originality in the way of illustration. 
1 am but -very little sanguine as to this plan ; but its having been 


To his Mother, Jan,, 1816. 


REMOVAL TO DOWNEND. 


257 


a matter of intended experiment has, I repeat, been the deciding 
point in the present case; but for this I should have had no hesi- 
tation to decline the situation. 

“ No doubt an additionally deciding consideration has been, 
that, declining this station, I might perhaps never reside near Bris¬ 
tol at all, nor perhaps for years to come, should life continue, re¬ 
move to the neighborhood of any large place, however convinced 
—as for many years back I have been convinced—that here I am 
a good deal too much, for the most useful improvement, out of the 
way of seeing what we call the ivorld. While I have had an 
uniform preference for Bristol, I have yet dreaded coming to any 
positive determination of removing thither under the character of 
a preacher unengaged. The summonses which I might be liable 
to have, when a preacher happened on any Sunday to be wanting, 
would, if at all frequent, have been extremely incommodious to me, 
unless I had made a rule to refuse uniformly, which would not 
have comported with the sense of duty. They would have been 
incommodious from tbe size of the places, and from the necessity 
of employing more time than I could easily spare in preparations. 
As the case will 7iow be, I shall have my own regular engagement, 
and that not so onerous as such occasional services would be, if 
frequent. 

“ It is, however, quite of the nature of an experiment in a 
jjhysical respect. 1 am not confident that the old debility of the 
organs affected by speaking may not return in the degree to for¬ 
bid a constant course of preaching. In point of emolument, the 
undertaking has very small temptation. The business of removal 
will be a heavy grievance; and there are some of our good 
neighbors whom it will be a matter of sincere regret to leave.” 

“ Next week, it seems,” he writes to Mr. Hughes, Sept. 23, 
1817, “you are, in conjunction with Hall, &c., to appear in the 
best style at Oxford.* I should very greatly like to hear the 
prime of our Baptist oratory, but it is not to be. In an humbler 
way I did my own share, by a long sermon here last Sunday 
evening, which left me so hoarse, as to be scarcely able to talk 
after it was over. 

“ By the end of next month, I expect, if all is well, to become 
a resident again at Downend. This has been determined by a 
balance of various considerations'. As to the mere measure Df 

* At a general meeting of the Baptist Missionary Society. 

18 


258 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


public exercise, it will make but a trifling difference, as I have 
been preaching nearly every Sunday for the last seven years, 
and generally twice in the day.” 


LETTEES. 


LXIX. TO MRS. JOHN SHEPPARD. 

Bourton, August 3, 1808. 

Dear Madam.— . . . . This should be about the time that you have 
often made your Dorsetshire journey; and possibly you are even now 
enjoying the society, excursions, and rural luxuries of your native downs, 
and even extending your rides to the sea-shore. Should this be the case, 

I trust you will bring back to the cottage confirmed health, and such an 
addition to your spirits as susceptible minds acquire from renewed inter¬ 
course vjith esteemed relatives, and an interval of variegated scene and 
action. Probably, however, no scene will more cordially please you than 
the very pretty meadows, and gentle hills round the cottage, with which, 
besides their acknowdedged beauty, you have so long a train of interesting- 
associations. It is, indeed, a very pleasing situation, and I shall not be 
in danger of losing the recollection, that it is a very pleasing house; I 
need not say in what light I regard the family wfith whom I was for seve¬ 
ral weeks a resident of it. I hope I may yet many times have the pleasure 
of seeing you in the same place,—excepting indeed the youngest of you; 
for as to her, I am afraid there can be no chance of her staying there 
long. There is no doubt in the world, that engineers of a certain de¬ 
scription are often reconnoitring the house, with a view to the best mode 
of laying siege to it, in order to take her out; nor have I the smallest 
confidence that she may not voluntarily go over to the enemy. As I am 
not entirely unacquainted with the methods adopted by this sort of ban¬ 
ditti, 1 do think, my dear madam, that in case of my being in your neigh¬ 
borhood a little while hence, it would not be amiss for you and me to 
hold, between ourselves, a council of war on the subject, in which I hum¬ 
bly think I might be able to make some suggestions, tending to guard 
against the danger both from external attack or stratagem, and from 
treachery within. 

I hope my good friend, Mr. Walter S., retains that spring and anima¬ 
tion of character for which everybody admires him, and that, as one 
requisite to his vivacity, his health is tolerably good. He has no doubt 
by this time made some of those pleasant excursions, that conduce so 
much to preserve it. One shall find no man, who has more of the happy 
art of varying his occupations, and enjoying the full pleasure of each of 
them in its turn. He seems equally at home in the employment, whether 


LETTERS. 


259 


he enters the social circle, or combats a modern quarto volume, or directs 
the arrangement of buildings or gardens. I hope he will long be able 
to enjoy such a vicissitude witli animation; and that his benevolence 
will not let it be any increase of his satisfaction to know that a great 

many younger people envy him.—I am, dear Madam, 

Yours, with sincerest respect, 

J. Foster. 


LXX. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ. 

Bourton, ISOS. 

.... I was much surprised at your making a difficulty and a deli¬ 
cacy as to the character of the review about Fox’s book. I was never 
aware there was the smallest question whether the tenor of the Eclectic 
Review should be most decidedly favorable to the general principles of 
liberty. The case is bad with us with a vengeance if we are to be vastly 
careful, and genteel, and timorous in telling what we are to think of the 
Charles’s, James, Laud, and all the high church of those times, .... 
if we must not applaud in iota and without any limitation whatever, the 
very noble spirit of freedom which beyond my expectations exults through 
this admirable fragment of a history. We have read it twice, and some 
parts of it a third time; but I have entirely forgotten all it contains ex¬ 
cept the death of Argyle and a few more such interesting episodes. Did 
you notice this passage—the death of Argyle ? Excepting some Chris¬ 
tian martyrs, a nobler exit and character cannot be found in all the his¬ 
tory of time. To have one such man rise among us, I would gladly see 
all the em})erors, kings, bishops, and reviewers except two^ carried to the 
top of Mount Hecla, and- 

.... I have read the admirable article in the Edinburgh Review, on 
the paper of Cevallos. It is indeed superlative; but it does not want for 
absurdities, as for instance in representing, that though Bonaparte will 
probably subdue the Spaniards, yet, their having revolted will, even after 
they are subdued, tend to excite other revolts in Germany, &-c., &c., as 
if the concluding part of the spectacle, their prostration and punishment, 
must not, in all reason, be the most impressive part of the lesson, con¬ 
firming, beyond any former campaign, the popular persuasion of his being 
invincible, and therefore of its being mere madness to provoke his ven¬ 
geance. But a greater absurdity is the pretending that the whole British 
nation are consciously and intentionally abetting revolutionary principles, 
when any child may know that the business of principles is not thought 
of by one in ten; that the great motive is mere hatred and fear of Bona¬ 
parte, and that our aristocracy and government hate, and will not fail to 
endeavor and stipulate to prevent and repress anything revolutionary in 
the Spanish transactions. It is utterly absurd to assume beforehand that 
the monarchy of Ferdinand, or Noodle, or Sooterkin, or whoever is to 
reign, will be of a very limited, restricted kind, and that there will be a 





260 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


grand reforming-of all abuses. Who is to secure all these fine things ? Are 
not the nobility now at the head of the insurrection ? Are they not abso¬ 
lute in their power? Will they not still be thus at the head of affairs, 
in the event of the success of the insurrection ? And in what way are 
the people, such as survive, to order and compel them to all these notable 
self-denying ordinances ? Indeed, who is foolish enough to dream, that 
a most ignorant populace, even if they had such power, know anything 
about politics ? Perhaps not one in ten of them knows that there is such 
a thing as representation in the world. 

The absurdity is not less of talking what grand reforms we shall have 
here, in consequence of it all, whether it fail or succeed. One does want 
to ask these talkers in what way these reforms are to be effected. Pray, 
how are the people—the general people—to be excited to demand any¬ 
thing about reforms ? Abominable abuses enough have been displayed 
by Cobbett, by the commissions of inquiry, &c., &c., but what do the 
collective people think or care about it ? And if the stupid, corrupted 
herd did think and care, and demand, what hold have they on the govern¬ 
ment ? The government will very properly laugh at their demanding, 

their palavering, their petitioning, and their grumbling.What a 

strange inconsistency pervades the Edinburgh Review. But lately they 
were defending against Cobbett every, absolutely every, corruption, even 
formally and specifically that of haying seats in parliament. 

It is very striking to observe how totally all reference to Providence is 
disowned by our political writers, and how trivial in their view would be 
any religious object which that Power may possibly have in view in such 
a case. As to the success of Bonaparte, I suppose there must, in fact, 
have been no great difference of opinion, since we have seen how easily 
Austria was quieted, perhaps by the Erfurth journey. With respect to 
the co-operation of our army, it seems never to strike anybody what 
horror the Spaniards must, at bottom, have for a vast assemblage of here¬ 
tics, men whom they deem children of the devil, going straight to him, 
and essentially endangering any cause in wliich they are employed. 
This feeling, not to mention insults which will inevitably be interchanged 
on the score of religion, will strangely damp the ardor of co-operation. 


LXXI. TO D. FARKEN ESQ. 

Bourton, Feh. 2S, 1809. 

Honored Sir, —As far as the fact simply of your condescension is 
concerned, in giving me the opportunity of “ protesting,” I am, as in 

duty bound, humbly grateful.As to connecting Walker with G. 

Wakefield, in the way you propose, besides the silly vanity, to say the 
least of it, of eagerly stepping forward to proclaim that we will lend no 
sanction, no, not we, to reformers and their schemes; just as if the sys¬ 
tem of corruption held its existence suspended on the favor and authority 





LETTERS. 


2G1 


of tlie Eclectic Review, and just as if there were nobody else in all the 
church and state to denounce Walker and Wakefield,—besides any con¬ 
sideration oi this kind, the coupling them together in the manner you are 
for, would probably be incorrect in point of fact. I never read muck of 
Wakefield, nor have any mighty impression of his talents and wisdom, 
but the precise thing I recollect most distinctly in his political references, 
is a short piece of argumentative ridicule (in a pamphlet in 1792 or 1793 ) 
of the notion of our balanced constitution, tending to show, indeed assert- 
ing, that a real and independent representation of the people would, by 
its very nature, soon put an end to monarchy, or at least reduce it to a 
thing of perfect insignificance. For what I can know. Walker might be 
a republican too; but in this book nothing of the kind appears. Since 
reading your letter, I have again read those two or three speeches at 
public meetings about the petitions, as it is in these that the political por¬ 
tion of the memoir consists, and there is no insinuation in the slightest 
degree against monarchy. He distinctly specifies the three parts of the 
constitution, and fully avows his approbation of a constitution so formed 
. . . . in a short, simple, unaffected way, briefly deducing the history 
of its formation. But then he goes on to represent that this constitution, 
so judicious, and so extolled, is a mere phantom, a mere name, unless it 
do, bonSi fide, consist of those three separate estates which have always 
been considered as composing it, both by commentators at home and 
commentators abroad. And he makes a series of singularly lucid, sim¬ 
plified, and forcible observations, to show that if the representatives of the 
people be substantially under the control, both as to their election and 
their legislative proceedings, of the crown and the aristocracy, there can¬ 
not be the three separate constituent powers required and meant by the 
universally received theory of the constitution, both among the vulgar 
and the learned. He dwells but briefly, and with no language of viru¬ 
lence, on the fact that the representation is at present utterly corrupt in 
its election (as to a preponderating proportion) and in its consequent 
action, no doubt presuming that this was quite apparent, and indeed it 
had been stated by other speakers in the meetings; but warmly urges a 
popular endeavor by petition to obtain the restoration of that kind of elec¬ 
tion which the constitution by its whole nature and design, and by its 
specific provisions, had always intended; cautioning the people at the 
same time against everything violent and rash. The business is done, 
as nearly as can be imagined, in the manner in which Locke would have 
done it. In the meeting and speech relating to “ Economical Reform,” 
he mentions a few items of corrupt and extravagant expenditure. In the 
large tract, “ The Dissenter’s Plea,” he argues the matter in hand with 
great acuteness and exemplary liberality; indeed in one or two places 
conceding full as much as a dissenter could consistently do, stoutly main¬ 
taining, however, that religion is not a thing within the magistrate’s 
jurisdiction. I should have spoken more strongly of this essay, but in 
consideration of our “ neutrality^ This, however, is only a collateral 


202 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


argument, and not that on which he chiefly dwells in pleading for a re¬ 
peal of the acts petitioned against. In short, in this book (and every¬ 
where else, as far as I know) there is nothing to identify him with the 
revolutionary school; he was of the school of Locke and those other 
names that, till of late years, have been generally held up as the standard 
and worthiest advocate of civil and religious liberty. 

.... You say, “ No good is to be got by forwarding the views, and 
adopting the spirit of the Cobbetts and the Burdetts.” What are Cobbett 
and Burdett to us, or to the question, except so far as they serve in the 
capacity of witnesses or advocates ? There is a grand question before 
the nation, not merely at this or the other particular juncture, but con¬ 
stantly and permanently; and a very simple question, though it consist 
of several parts; as first, whether civil and religious liberty, wfith a firm 
and guarded security for it, be really a good thing for a people or not; 
or whether all that has been said in its praise by reputed wise and good 
men has been foolish babbling, or deliberate deception; and all that has 
been suffered in its defence or recovery a mere sacrifice to a worthless 
idol; and whether after all the millions of volumes’ worth that has been 
written or speechified, and prayed against despotism, political and sacer¬ 
dotal, this same despotism is, notwithstanding, the very thing most con¬ 
ducive to social happiness and improvement. Second, whether our 
constitution do or do not really mean that there shall be a real represeiv- 
tation of the people. Third, whether what is called the representative 
body be not now, and of late years, desperately and systematically cor¬ 
rupt ; and necessarily so, in consequence of its mode of election, and its 
length of duration; and whether it does not palpably betray the very 
interests of which it is professedly the guardian, and with impunity laugh 
in the face of any complainant or remonstrant that tells it it does so. 
Fourthly, whether it be not palpably proved, on an immense mass of 
evidence, some of the clearest and least contradictable of which happens 
to be brought forward by “ the Cobbetts and the Burdetts,” that through¬ 
out every part of the practical executive system, down to the smallest 
ramifications, the most enormous peculation, and in plain speech, what 
would be called villany in any other department than that of the state 
(that is, the conduct of the great public interests), does prevail, and con¬ 
tinually increase. Now, these and similar matters, I suppose, form the 
prominent part of what we mean by politics. I suppose, too, that no 
honest man, that has at all attended to the subject, can make a doubt 
how the truth stands on each of these points. And then I may surely 
ask, in the name of sense and decency, whether an honest and religious 
reviewer can have a question which side he should take, when the sub¬ 
ject is placed in his way by the very topics of the books which he is to 
criticise. Because Burdett and Cobbett, and some other men, whose 
characters he does not approve, are among the means of exposing a 
world of abominable proceedings, attributable, in a good measure, to the 
state of the representation, do therefore these base proceedings, and this 


LETTERS. 


263 


parliament, the protector or partaker of the baseness, instantly acquire a 
claim to the kind partiality and delicate forbearance of this honest and 
religious reviewer ? It does not belong to his vocation to dwell long on 
the subject; and /, wliose sentences and paragraphs of the kind are the 
present cause of complaint, and the cause of this most stupid sheetful of 
common-place and truism, do never dwell long, and have never dwelt 
long, on the subject. If passages of the length I have made them, and 
intelligibly pointed against the system of corruption, cannot rightly have 
a place in the Eclectic Review, that Review ought avowedly and explicitly 
to confine itself to a limited and defined department of literature, and not 
let itself be understood, as it now is, to take a general cognizance of 

speculation and morals.It would no doubt be curious enough, 

just at this time, to forswear all reference to a subject which, taken on 
the wide scale, is convulsing the whole civilized world,—which is affect- 
, ing the very essence of the public morals,—is practically drawing 
towards a very awful crisis, and which is interfering in numberless ways 
with our civil and religious condition, our exertions, our pecuniary means, 
and all our temporal prospects: but one thing would be gained to the 
Review by the exclusion;—there would be no insinuated apologies for 
wickedness in high places; there would be no praises of such things as 
Custance; nor fawning, and at the same time despised attempts to gratify 
bigots and plunderers by officious and uncalled for disclaimers of such 
men as Walker and Wakefield, either of whom, at least the former of 
whom, would have lost his head sooner than have participated in the wa¬ 
ges of unrighteousness. 

.... If by “attempts to advance particular interests” you really 
mean the general interest of truth and justice against all manner of cor¬ 
ruptions, and against that kind of corruption in particular, which any 
book in hand forces on our view—it is a noble plan for a free and Chris¬ 
tian Review to renounce any such design, and wonderfully useful it is 
likely to be in consequence. Yes, he must be a most worthy and formi¬ 
dable censor morum, who dare not for his neck say a word against cor¬ 
rupt statesmen and prelatical bigots, or give the smallest hint of being 
aware that the House of Commons is anything else than a convocation 
of saints, so holy that we had need plant a guard on them to prevent angels 
stealing them into heaven, the moment they come out of doors at St. 
Stephen’s. Yours with profound respect. 


LXXII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Bourton, March 16, 1809. 

Mt dear Friend,— I am highly delighted by the probability, almost pro¬ 
bability, of soon seeing you here.Though I cannot wish that your 

complaint may not be better, I do certainly and very strongly wish, that 
while it is a little mending, you may think it is not better; or at least 





264 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


that you may have prudence enough to conclude to forbear ail public 
effort for some time. A permanent injury to the voice, to say no worse, 
may be the consequence of forcing it during the continuance of the or¬ 
ganic disabilicy. Come and stay a few weeks; the very change of air 
may be useful; and both I and wife should be exceedingly glad to retain 
you till it be fully safe for you to attack the obdurate Battersea con¬ 
sciences again. Leave the pagan caitiffs a while to their reflections, and 
to a change of ministry, while you take a change of air. 

.... Your letter contains some very just reproof, and some very 
foolish explanation of my unconscionable length of silence. I feel, 
beyond all comparison, more mortification and irksome sense of debility 
about intellectual faculty and performance, than I do self-complacency. 
And I must still and ever protest, that my neglect of waiting is not to be 
attributed to decline of friendship.* It is owing to an inveterate, and I 

* “ You address so many pages to the public, that your former corre¬ 
spondents ought to excuse you, and more than excuse you, if they should 
seem to be neglected, and even abandoned, in consequence of your far- 
extended lucubrations. 

“ I have said too much ; a certain portion of your former correspondents 
claim, at least, an occasional notice—and it would not misbecome you, if you 
granted what they claim a little oftener. He is the fittest man to teach 
and discipline the community, who himself observes all the proprieties of 
life. But that Maria !—Maria repels the charge, and asks, ‘ whether cor¬ 
respondents did not complain before the alleged monopoly took place.’ I will 
settle the business, then, in another way. J. F. has not the privilege of 
numbering among his would-be correspondents, men of adequate intellec¬ 
tual strength ; the most Herculean among them can barely appreciate and 
relish his paragraphs; they can make him no return in kind. Hence his 
interest in them becomes feeble; if he seizes his pen, with a view to their 
individual gratification, his mind sinks towards their level by an oppressive 
sympathy ; or if he keeps up to his own standard, he writes what ought to 
be printed, without acquiring either the fame or the emolument which he 
might have acquired by printing. Here it is obvious, benevolent, as well 
as selfish motiv^es may influence, since the time occupied in writing a 
superior letter, might enable J. F. to instruct an author and his readei’s, 
through the medium of a Review, whose sale his pen appears to have pro¬ 
moted. Yet this said J. F. might perhaps be suitably reminded, that a 
letter might please and improve which should involve no labor, and display 
no genius. I will not prose on this plain subject. Verbum sat. 

“ It is sometimes remarked, that your critiques have too little reference 
to the article before you ; that they are deficient in analysis and citation ; 
and that thus, while they exhibit the reviewer, they obscure the author. 
This censure applies eminently to your critique on the Chronicle of the 
Cid. The work is disposed of rather uncivilly, and everything gives way 
to your reflections on Hispano-Anglican politics. For my own part, 1 
would not exact much more than you assign to the w’ork, except on the 
score of precedent; especially as your reflections are so accurate, and so 
much to the point. Perhaps, indeed, the circumstance of our having 
stipulated nothing in favor of Protestantism, detached from the mass of 
your reflections, may be plausibly vindicated against your implied animad¬ 
version ; but taking the article as a whole, it so well asserts general prin¬ 
ciples, and so completely confounds the pseudo-patriotic declamations on 
behalf of the Quixotic effort to aid a people, who to this hour have no just 
conceptions of liberty, that I read it with animated pleasure. What must 


LETTERS. 


265 


now believe unchangeable, antipathy to all writing; an antipathy which T 
may truly say, and am sorry for its being true, accompanies me through 
every paragraph or sentence that I ever write. It is with a feeling approach¬ 
ing to hatred, that I do at any time, on any occasion or subject, take up the 
pen. Even the small wares in the way of criticism, therefore, that I have 
compelled myself to manufacture, have cost me more self-denial than Hen¬ 
ry’s or Gill’s Expositions, or the whole immense works of Calmet, ever cost 
their respective authors. This aversion would' diminish if I acquired 
any greater facility; but I do not, except in point of being correct, nor 1 
suppose now ever shall. 

Do you come next week, and that will be better than quires of writing; 
I mean my writing, for I have lost none of the animated pleasure with 
which I receive a letter from you. 

Coles has just lost his infant.It is too true that he is, as you 

say, a better man than I am; I hope to get before him, notwithstand¬ 
ing.Darken is still at you'he says, about the Review, whenever 

he sees you. Why do you not buckle to ? I repeat once more, that it 
will be useful both to the Review and to yourself. And it is the more 
necessary to have a complete crew of dissenters, as I am persuaded the 

churchmen auxiliaries, excepting perhaps J- of H-, will by 

degrees, and rather soon, declare oil’. V\^e are taking a tone of freedom 
which they wall not be able to endure, and in which they will, besides, 
feel it impolitic to have been known, in any manner, to coalesce with. 
They have, it seems, been warned not to do it, by the author of Zeal 
ivilhout Innovation. Now, as a real, positive, absolute, peremptory secret— 

we think of Sheridan and other opposition men, who bawled so loud for 
these roused but not illuminated Dons, who, after all, have treated their 
English protectors with so much indifference and so much contempt ? 

Who is to review ‘ Zeal without Innovation ?’ It is calculated to pro¬ 
duce a rich harvest of theological wormwood. With some serious deduc¬ 
tions, I admire ‘ Coelebs hope it will be reviewed by you. Rowland 
Hill’s Lovegood should be held up for comparison with that orderly parson 
Barlow. What is the starched priest by the side of the cordial pastor t 
Had that Rowland left out half his controversies, and purified his dialect, 
his work, in point of utility, would have borne away the palm. In a large 
circle it will, with all its imperfections. 

“ .... I have not seen the Quarterly, which is to rival the Edinburgh. 
In religion, 1 suppose, it will have the praise of not being so bad ; but in 
politics, I anticipate the reverse of all I delight to read in the Edin¬ 
burgh. ... 

“I was impressed while reading the la-st number of the Eclectic, and 
indeed I am often impressed with the importance of cultivating and draw¬ 
ing forth the mental talents of the sanctuary. The barrister and a hun¬ 
dred more are reviling tlie class without mercy ; opposed to them are the 
vapid, or the violent, or the illiterate: when shall the right race come ? 

“ Again I exhort you to prepare for your fourth edition, and to revise your 
Essay on Time. Moreover, I recommend you to study the signs ot the 
times, .... so as to start a suitable subject, in the discussion of which 
you shall bear down, with Napoleonic energy, on the host summoned ly 
folly and by sin.”—T/iC Rev. Joseph Hughes to Mr. Foster; Battersea. 
March y 1809. 





•266 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


and which, for the present at least, you must keep so—Parken has in¬ 
formed me, that Achilles himself is poising his tremendous lance against 
this ill-fated, officious, bravo champion of the church. We shall see 
whether its point of steel has become less deadly from rusting so long at 

Leicester.I hope the article will come soon, will be long, and in 

the best manner. I do not expect to see Ccelcbs, in any connection with 
the review. The article about the Cid, though open, I am fully aware, 
to various objections—some of which I could have obviated, if I had not 
been severely driven for time—is perhaps the one by which I should 
expect to produce more good effect than any other. 


LXXIII. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ. 

B our ton, June 2, 1809. 

.... Rose’s is really an entertaining book. I was very mad when 
I saw the price marked at £l 5s., but, on coming to read a piece of it, I 
found that George had worked very hard for his money. He does indeed 
transcribe and translate most plentifully, and charges you for acres of 
white paper; but, at the same time, he gives you such a sample of 
industrious grubbing among old records, manuscripts, and moss-covered 
statutes, as you shall probably never live to see again. He has certainly 
refuted Fox, as to some slight historical particulars, especially as to his 
assertion and reasonings that the introduction of popery into England 
was not a leading, or the leading, object of James’s policy. As far as I 
have yet looked, there is nothing that bears with any particular force on 
Fox’s political principles, excepting his partiality to the Whigs, whom 
George proves to have been as confounded villains about, as their oppo¬ 
nents. The whole job is done with perspicuity and prodigious good 
humor, and the whole job tends to prove the folly of any man's pretending 
to write history, as it shows what enormous toil of research is necessary 
to ascertain conclusively a diminutive portion of the facts of a diminutive 
portion of the annals, of a diminutive portion of the two-legged insects 
that swarm on this earth, if indeed even this sample is conclusive, and if 
some still more effectual grubber should not grub up even a confutation 
of George himself.* 

.... Now that I recollect about Hall’s composition—that excellence 
which you praised, and which he has in a very high degree, of making 
brief, strong sentences, completing the sense in each—is sometimes 
carried to a fault. He makes, in some places, a number of laconic pro¬ 
positions in succession, which are quite independent of one another, but 
which ought to have been contrived into a texture. Or, to go from the 
business of weaving to the more dignified one—fighting—he attacks with 

* Such a “ grubber’’^ was Serjeant Heywood. Vide Contributions, &c., 
Vol. I., p. 160 (Eclectic Review, July, 1809), and p. 176 (Eclectic Reyiew, 
Dec. 1811). r V . , 




LETTERS. 


267 


number of single, separate, bold savages, whom he should have dis¬ 
ciplined and combined into a phalanx. In this quality of writing we are 
nil beaten hollow by the old workmen, such as Hooker and Jeremy 
Taylor; the latter is just now more in my memory. You shall find him 
preserve a strict connection through a whole folio page ; a sentence shall 
be a complete thought, but it shall, at the same time, be an integral and 
inseparable portion of—not an accumulation, but a combination, of— 
thoughts, which are assisting one another by a linked and consentaneous 
action to prove or illustrate some one truth. The figure is much less 
than sufficiently strict, if I say, that there is one long, identical rope, and 
that every thought, however richly dressed, is placed close behind its 
fellow, and giving a stout pull. From the little I have yet read, I am 
strongly inclined to think this said Jeremy is the most completely eloquent 
writer in our language. There is a most manly and graceful ease and 
freedom in his composition, while a strong intellect is working logically 
through every paragraph, while all manner of beautiful images con¬ 
tinually fall in as by felicitous accident. 


LXXIV. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Bourton, July 4, 1809. 

My dear Friend,— . . . . We were much disappointed at not seeing 
you at the association time. We had the first tangible gooseberries, &c. 
&c., prepared to regale you, and were representing in our imaginations 
how we should be ourselves mentally and morally regaled. But we did 
not wonder at not having seen you, when we afterwards learnt the limits 
of your time, what your plan was, and how you were accompanied. 

This chance being gone by, is there none of your passing this way to 
Bristol 7 ... . But for something like a wish to visit London within 
the space of half a year or so, I should be for trying to make an induce¬ 
ment of my own wish to accompany you to Bristol. . . . If I should con¬ 
clude for Bristol myself, I shall venture to urge the plan. But really I 
have passed so idle a spring and summer that I think I must not venture 
so far from my books. Among those books I am muddling on in a poor 
way. Many of them I never look into; some of them, when I do look 
into, I cannot understand (pe rex. Cudworth, Locke, Hume, &c.) ; the 
bits and sections I read without order, in others, I utterly forget; and in 
short, but for the name and notion of the thing, I might nearly as well 
have no books at all, excepting indeed those with pictures in, which I 
find nearer my taste and capacity. Partly by opportunity I have lately 
been led into a fancy for possessing myself of the most noted divines of 
the established church, and have bought the principal works of Hooker, 
Cudworth, Taylor (Jeremy), and Barrow, and I have read enough of each 
to be able to talk about them, and to praise them in the customary lingo 
of criticism, without talking altogether without book. I want a few more 




268 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of them, especially Chillingworth and Leslie. I apprehend our dissen¬ 
ters are not sufficiently acquainted with these antique gentlemen. Per¬ 
haps we are mortified at their striking superiority over all the non-cons, 
of that or the subsequent age. I have read more of Taylor than of the 
others that I have enumerated, and certainly should soon have discovered 
him to be passing eloquent and able in every respect, if T had never once 
heard of his name ;—very far beyond even such men as Bates and Howe. 
Reading such authors, and some others that I have looked into of late, 
tends to make one shrink from the thoughts of writing. To say nothing 
of the humiliating consciousness as to the degree of talent, one is made 
to feel that, in point of knowledge, one has a world to learn, before one 
can pretend to write in any commanding manner. I am trying, in the 
teeth of indolence, debility, and a wretched memory, to read and study 
hard, and will hope to become competent to something or other in time, 
that may considerably serve the cause of religion. 

I am vexed to hear you again declare off from being a reviewer, after 
I have told you so many times of its ])alpable advantages, in a literary re¬ 
spect. I cannot forbear to renew my exhortations on the subject. It 
helps to toss abroad your manner of thinking and composing, and there¬ 
fore to help your riddance from any bad habit that is in danger of 
becoming fixed and unalterable. I am bound in duty, therefore, once 
more to give and inculcate neglected good advice. Your last Tract 
Society report is freer than anything you have written before, from your 
literary besetting sin; indeed, it appeared to me about wholly free. 1 
am alwnys gratified to think of your various and active utility; but, at 
the same time, you ought to set it down in your purposes, and the train 
of your studies, to do something that shall continue to preach and per¬ 
suade after you shall have become finally silent. And this, not for that 
bubble fame, but to protract, as far as possible, a beneficial agency. 


LXXV. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ. 

Dear Sir,— It would be some consolation to poor authors, if they 
could know how reviewers plague one another. And truly it may 
be made a question how far that calling can be a good one which in¬ 
volves so much irregularity, idleness, threatening, reproach, disregard of 
promises, and consequent want of confidence and co-operation, among 
its agents. Only, however, set aside the morality of the employment, 
and all this may be very good for giving it effect, for depravity is allowed 
to be one of the best whetstones of ability. What would become, I 
wonder, of our preparing of vitriol for authors and their books, if w^e 
were always talking to one another in the style of Moravians at a love- 
feast, and handing round candies and cowslip wine ? This would be a 
poor mental diet for the noble profession of tomahawks. The more we 
■:an contrive to snarl and quarrel among ourselves, the more will our 



LETTERS. 269 

.'lands be in, for the benefit of authors, the edification of our readers, and 
tne sale of our Review. 

.... I hope you have not engaged Coleridge’s Poems soon to be 
published, to any of your gang. I shall be eager to see them, and should 
review them con ambre. He is the poet that will overtop all his contem¬ 
poraries. 

.... .Teremy Taylor will never more be read but by the curious few. 
He is too learned, too antiquated, and has too much of logical techni¬ 
cality, to be ever again a popular author. He is further removed from 
popular language, a good deal, than even Barrow, and incomparably 
further than Tillotson. So far as he shall be read, the only harm the 
critic has to prevent is of that kind which Hall describes so well in char¬ 
acterizing Tillotson’s and Barrow’s theology,* and the possibility of 
being tempted, under the notion of being ingenious and brilliant, to imi¬ 
tate, and produce a gross,. conceited affectation in imitating, his rich 
novelties of phrase, his arbitrary combination of words—the result, in 
him, of an infinite variety of particularities of thought—such analogies, 
antitheses, and illusions, as no mind could have been capable oi’, that 
was not full of all manner of learning, and teeming with all manner of 
fancy. 


LXXVI. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ. 

BourtoHy October 25, 1809. 

.... The speaking in the personation on the stage intends, at least, 
and assumes to be something more than pure recitation; it will not suf¬ 
fer itself to be considered as merely free and memoriter reading; and its 
being so considered would destroy the greatest part of the fascination. 
It aims to impose itself on the fancy, as at the least some middle thing 
between mere recitation and an utterance of the living sentiments of 
real characters in a real situation. Indeed, that which it necessarily 
aims at, and by means of which it must captivate, has always appeared 
to us to involve so gross and monstrous an absurdity, that we are per¬ 
suaded, if there shall ever come an age of sound sense, the acted drama 
will be contemned for being essentially irrational, setting aside all moral 
and religious considerations. For ourselves, we will own, that the sug¬ 
gestions and questions naturally arising in our minds, “ What’s Hecuba 
to him, or he to Hecuba ?” Who and what are you, that are vociferating 
those words of passion ? What business have you to be in any passion 
on those boards, and to be taking all those postures and gesticulations 
about it, when you know the whole is a fiction, at which you are going 
to laugh at supper ? And if you are in no passion at all, any more than 
you will then be, over your wine and ratafia, what a ridiculous thing it 
is to be thus whining, writhing and tossing, to keep up such a miserable 

* Hall’s Works, vol. iv., p. 134 {Review of Gisborne’s Sermons). 





270 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER- 


sham ? We will own that such suggestions have always been to us a 
plentiful damper to any portion of that sympathy and raptiye we have so 
often heard of.* 


LXXVII. TO WALTER SHEPPARD, ESQ. 

Bourton, December 25, 1809. 

Dear Sir, —A late letter from Miss A. gives me information respect¬ 
ing the state of your health, which, in common with every one of your 
friends,! am very sorry to hear. I have been so accustomed, in my own 
mind, and in speaking of you among our friends, to congratulate you on 
possessing an activity and an animated enjoyment of life, very unusual 
at your age, that I have very seldom anticipated for you a time when 
these would-necessarily fail. 

I have promised myself, almost, as a matter of course, that whenever 
I should see you again, I should find you just as before. But at last the 
time is come for the Disposer of life and health to intimate to you, and 
your surrounding friends, that he has a sovereign right to resume what 
lie has so long bestowed. 

Nevertheless, Miss A. B.’s account leads me to hope that your life 
may be spared to your friends yet a while longer; and I sincerely join 
with them all in wishing it might be even for a number of years— 
though I do not know whether, as to yourself, this should be the wish 
of true friendship, since every month and year through which we all 
wish your life may be protracted, would impose an exercise of your pa¬ 
tience and resignation, and painfully remind you of that past vigor which 
you will not expect to possess any more on earth. Happily, the deter¬ 
mination of this concern lies with the wisest and best of all your friends, 
and happily, too, you can rejoice that it does so. It is gratifying to me, 
though not at all surprising, to be informed that your mind is so tranquil 
and resigned. You can look back with thankfulness on a long life, 
during which you have been favored with prosperity, with affectionate 
friends, and with a most uncommon share of health and cheerfulness, 
and during which you have not forgotten to whom you owed all these 
blessings, and (which is a subject for still much greater thankfulness) 
you now look forward to an infinitely longer and better life, to be con¬ 
ferred by the same divine Benefactor. To be able thus to look back, 
and thus to look forward, with profound emotions of gratitude to that 
Benefactor at every step of the contemplation, will inspire a joy whicli 

* From J. Foster, Oct. 25, 1809, intended as part of a critique on Pliim- 
tre ; preserved as indicating a curious trait in his character—the absolute 
control possessed by his judgment over his fancy, while that fancy, at the 
same time, is above all others electrically vivid and energetic. The fancy 
of other men is often the tyrant of their passions—his, the servant of his 
understanding .”—JVoteby Mr. Darken; vide Contributions, &.c., to the 
Eclectic Review, vol. i., p. 345, on Plumtre’s Defence of the Stage 



LETTERS. 


271 


I trust will sustain you during your liours of greatest languor and weak¬ 
ness, and during all the remainder of your journey of life, whether 
longer or shorter. What a delightful resource is piety at such a season, 
when it is an old resource, instead of being then sought for the first time. 
It is not a trifling consolation, neither, that all your friends near at hand 
will cordially and anxiously contribute to alleviate the pressure of afflic¬ 
tion, and that the best of them will petition our supreme Friend to make 
it light. I will hope to hear that you are considerably reviving, and 
likely to remain among them a while longer, and afford them pleasure 
without feeling life a burden yourself. I will hope to have myself the 
pleasure of seeing you yet again, and feeling some of that cheerfulness 
in your company, which I have scarcely ever been in it without enjoy¬ 
ing. Whatever may be the divine dispensation concerning your health 
and life, it will assuredly be a merciful one. You yourself believe that 
it will, and this faith will be precious in every oppressive hour. 

I most cordially wish you the recovered strength necessary for making 
your life, if protracted, more pleasing than painful, or the gracious sup¬ 
port requisite for sustaining with Christian fortitude a prolonged illness 
which may terminate in a removal to a better world. 


LXXVIII. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

Bourton, January 7, 1810. 

My dear Sir, —Your letter did not, and could not, fail to awaken 
some of the most pleasing sentiments that I can ever feel, recollections 
of ancient friendship, and assurances that this friendship includes no 
principle of decay. I immediately recognized your hand, and was glad 
to see it; I had often wished, during the past half year, to hear from 
you again; but I knew you are at all times busy in the most useful 
engagements. I wish myself also to be usefully busy ; but I would en- 
ti-eat you not to repeat such expressions as that in your letter of being 
“ unwilling to intrude too much on my time such expressions have 
quite a mortifying and irksome effect, as coming from a most respected 
old friend, whose own time is employed to a much more valuable pur¬ 
pose, and, I am afraid, with much more unremitted industry. 

I find myself naturally adopting such words as “ old ” and “ ancient,” 
in referring to the earlier periods of our friendship. Does not that 
period appear to you a very long time since ? and have you not half a 
feeling, sometimes, as if you were growing old ? I have, at times, very 
much of this kind of consciousness. It is not the being aware of any 
physical or mental decline, but a remoteness in my retrospects—the 
disappearance by death of so many of my elders, and even co-evals— 
the dispersion and changed condition of my early companions—the 
alteration of a great part of the economy of my feelings—the five feet 
ten inches altitude of persons whom I recollect as infants when I first 




272 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTEil. 


reached that altitude—and the very sound and appearance of the word 
forty (to the number meant in which word I shall soon have a very 
particular relation)—these, and I suppose many more things, concur to 
make me feel how far I have gone already past the meridian hour of 
the short day of life. Nor do I in the least deplore this fact, in any 
other way than regretting the miserably deficient improvement of a 
life of which the best part is now gone. 

This grand consideration of making the noblest use of life will be 
very animating and consoling to you, amidst a measure of labor whicli 
would otherwise be really oppressive to you. You will have the grati¬ 
fication of feeling that each week that passes away is filled with your 
very best efforts, in one of the most important departments of human 
industry. 1 earnestly wish your health may be habitually firm enough 
for your office, and tliat the health of your most intimate associate may 
be firm enough to bear her part of the economy. I am sorry to hear 
your unfavorable account of it, but wisli to hope that by this time you 
have some more decisive indications of its being soon to be re-established. 
She must sustain a most ample share, indeed, of your domestic and 
even professional cares ; and if it were only for your sake, I wish that 
such an important “ helpmeet ” may recover, and long retain her vigor 
and spirits ; but also for her own sake, and for that of her children. I 
most sincerely wisli she may have all the strength and animation which 
she possessed at those times, which I often recollect, when I used to 
frequent her house and her company, and derive vivacity from seeing so 
much of it displayed by her. Your children, I trust, will somewhat 
more than repay your incessant cares for them, by their affection, do¬ 
cility, and hopeful dispositions and faculties. The larger number of 
them, I believe, are boys, and I continue to wish that the larger number 
of them may some time turn out pjrachers, since there is no cause on 
earth so important as religion, since there is no chance of this cause 
being extensively served but by dissenters, and since it is exceedingly 
desirable that the dissenting teachers should spring from among the 
youth of a liberal and literary education. 

I am glad yoiu' respected father does not experience so much of the 
infirmities of age as to prevent him from feeling great interest and 
pleasure in prosecuting his commentary. It appears to me an em:)loy- 
ment most happily chosen to beguile those infirmities, as well as to 
crown the conclusion of life with a peculiar utility. No doubt he feels 
it, next to the exercises of devotion, his most pleasing and even exhila¬ 
rating resource, amidst those visitations of pain and languor from which 
the age of seventy can seldom be entirely exempt. I cannot wonder 
that your mother, as she is, I believe, some years older than your father, 
should show the evident signs of decline within a single year; but I 
liope, especially for his sake, that she is yet appointed to continue an 
inhabitant of the earth a good while longer. My imagination has often 
sought out the site of their house, and represented the calm and devout 
habits of its possessors. 



LETTERS. 


273 


Mr. Greaves, with the exception of the temporary infelicity arising 
from the loss you advert to, is, perhaps, among our early friends, the 
individual on whose lot and progress Providence has borne fully as 
auspicious an aspect as on any other. We three have all of us the 
strongest reason to be thankful to that most gracious Providence. And, 
considering our age, and now established principles, views, and habits, 
it is no slight satisfaction to hope that we are now passed safe beyond 
the most unsteady, hazardous, and tempting periods, feelings, and scenes 
of life ;—not that we can ever be safe but by divine preservation ; but 
still it is no trifling advantage that some of the most pernicious influ¬ 
ences of a bad world have necessarily, as to us, lost very much of 
their power. 

I cannot but be gratifled at hearing so favorable an account of my 
father and mother. I should like to see them, and all of you again 
but a consideration of the melancholy of parting, the enormous expense 
of travelling so far, with many other considerations, prevent me from 
forming any plan or positive intention on the subject. I deeply regret 
the condition of the manufacturers and the poor in your neighborhood ; 
and the more as there seems no prospect, in the political state of the 
world, of any material change in favor of cornmerce. 

The business of reviewing has been tiie chief use I have made of the 
pen for a good while past, and probably will for some time to come. I 
mean to addict myself a good deal to other composition for a while; 
and, in the meantime, I consider this reviewing as the best possible kind 
of discipline for my improvement in composition, while also I am acquir¬ 
ing a little of different kinds of knowledge by the reading which at¬ 
tends it. 

.... The review of Crabbe’s Poems in the January number is by 
Mr. Hall, but is only the second article he has ever contributed, and, I 
am afraid, may not soon be followed by any other: he has such a strange 
and unfortunate aversion to writing. 


LXXIX. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ. 

* Bourton. 

There is a very good show of ability and knowledge in the 
Quarterly Review. The article about Spain is by some person better 
acquainted with the actual state of that country than any of the political 
critics. It involves, however, no refutation of the notions of Cobbett 
and us; on the contrary, it tends more fully than anything I have seen 
to prove the necessity of an absolute and total demolition of every part 
of the government, the prostration to the very dust of every institution 
throughout the country, in order to create any union and prolongation 
of the national energy. I own it goes a good way, at the same time, 
towards showing that this was impracticable, and therefore at the 
19 




274 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


whole design was preposterous, and the English but fools to encourage 
it. Southey’s article may do good, by gaining the attention to the mis¬ 
sion, of persons whose attention would never have been gained by the 
professedly religious publications, that is, as he will foolishly have it, the 
Methodistical.* 

.... I have not the means of learning, further than by internal evi¬ 
dence, what you do for the Eclectic Review. The article about Hannah 
More was very decently done ; part of the first page being unintelligible, 
as should always be the case, when the article is to be of some length, 
in order to giv-e it, at the outset, a kind of oracular and mysterious dig¬ 
nity. 

With great and melancholy interest I have been running through a 
good part of the New Annual Register for the years 1791-2-3-4, &c., 
and contemplating the enormous expense of talent, grand achievement, 
and life, under circumstances where one clearly sees the moral impossi¬ 
bility of doing any good. Between the depravity of the French popu¬ 
lace and the effects inevitably produced by the coalition of the hostile 
powers, one sees how the greatest talents and virtues that ever came on 
tJiis earth, would have failed to establish the French people in a state of 
liberty and happiness. 


LXXX. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ. 

Boiirton. 

.... As to the phrase gnashing of teeth,” you should be more 
discreet than to defend it; it is quite enough to have inserted it, and it is 
more than enough, in condemning it, to say, that it is an attempt to turn 
into a witticism one of the expressions used in the Bible to describe the 
most dreadful of all things in the universe, the agonies inflicted by the 
divine vengeance Ln another world. As to my often adverting to the 
great wicked spirit, it does not become me to say that I do not too often 
and too lightly do this ; but there is, notwithstanding, a very material 
difference between alluding too lightly to him as the prompter of many 
fooleries as well as many crimes, and alluding with the same indefensi¬ 
ble lightness to the express, inspired description of infernal suffering. 
.... Have you any guess who wrote the admirable review of Sydney 
Smith in the Christian observer ? Has Hall undertaken anything more ? 
An excellent subject for him would be, when it comes to a volume, Cole¬ 
ridge’s “ Friend,” excepting what is political in it. Do you read it ? 
He is a marvellously original and subtile thinker. Appearances are 
favorable thus far as to religion, and I hope he is one of the few geniuses 
that the aforesaid Satan does not inspire, and will not be allowed to seize. 
If Hall should not choose, I might have the ambition of trying my own 
hand on this “ Friend,” but Hall is the proper man. 

* yide Quarterly Review, Feb., 1809, Art. xvii., “ Periodical Accounts 
relative to the Baptist Missionary Society,” &c. 





LETTERS. 


275 


, , . . The “ four supporters ” are no doubt oracular men, one and all, 
but I can tell these supporters that it is with the dissenters that the 
work will ultimately stand or fall, and with the dissenters it has but 
barely even now recovered its character for spirit and freedom, after its 
merge in that slough of low sycophancy to church and state, through 
which these supporters had the wisdom to make it go, in the commence¬ 
ment. Talk of me “ hanging them,” why they were within the smallest 
trifle of hanging themselves, and would have done it, if I and Co. had 
not slackened the noose, by means of a quantity of that very inde¬ 
pendence which these very same rescued and living men bawl out will 
be hanging of them. As it is totally out of the question to think of 
really pleasing both of the two great parties, the policy is to lean towards 
the dissenters—they are the rising party, and they are the final resource 
and hope of anything which is to pretend to freedom of thinking; and 
the “ supporters ” know, or may know, that, do what they please, it will 
be absolutely impossible to satisfy permanently the church people with 
anything'that would deserve the approbation of independent men. But 
it is not simply the church and state people, as it should seem, but the 
high church and state that these supporters arc so intimidated at: the 
class of persons, 1 suppose, that cannot endure to have it said that there 
has ever been corruption among statesmen, or intolerance and persecu¬ 
tion among bishops; i. e. who must not allow a reference to the most no¬ 
torious facts of our history, even when tlie transactions and characters of 
that history are the subjects formally in hand. But why did not this 
right worthy class of readers patronize the Review at first, when it was 
so anxiously cooked to their taste ? 


LXXXI. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Bourton, June 28, 1810. 

.... A residence in a place like this is subject to such a perfect 
sameness of occurrences, actions, and feelings, that one really has a 
consciousness, at any time, all round the year, of having nothing at all 
to write about to a friend at a distance. You can form no notion of it, 
in the remotest degree, in your active sphere, and various expeditions, 
pursuits, and societies. The truth is, that my faculties suffer very ma¬ 
terially, in point of vigor and dexterity, and even in point of mere know¬ 
ledge, by this extreme recluseness of life. But this is no neighborhood 
to mend the matter. Society here, with the exception of one or two 
individuals, is all miserable trifling, and small talk. These observations 
involve or imply no complaint whatever of my immediate domestic 
society ; that is soft, complacent, tender; and it is improving, too, so far 
as this very softness does not tend to preclude the harder subjects, and 
the severer exertions of thought from social converse. But in the midst 
of afTectionate complacency, and the numerous topics of more facile 



276 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


discussion, my wretchedly indolent mind is reluctant to set itself, in 
earnest, to dialogues (in which it would not be left without co-operation) 
on the questions that contribute most to harden and invigorate the intel¬ 
lectual man. We read socially a great deal; among other books, almost 
all those that I review. As far as I read or study solitarily, I am just as 
desultory and unsystematic as 1 have always been—but shall not be to 
the end of the chapter. ■. . . . 

It is an interesting, though too rapid, sketch you give of your northern 
adventures. We must have the deficiency made up by oral recitals, a 
little while hence. I am glad you are not yet too old and sapless to be 
delighted with recollecting, on the spot, your morning of life, and its in¬ 
terests. I have myself but little of this capability now. Notwithstand¬ 
ing the acknowledged, and not to he forgotten, beauties of Todmorden 
Vale, I have no wish to revisit the scene of early life, but on account of 
those two old persons you saw, and half a dozen others, several of them 
of nearly the same antiquity. 1 am very glad those two have once seen 
you ; they always think of you as a benefactor to them, in having been 
so to me ; and as long as they live they will be gratified to have at last 
a defined image of you in their minds. I find my immediate relation¬ 
ships at prodigious extremes when I turn in thouglit from those two 
venerable persons, whose joint ages amount to at least seventy-nine 
years a-piece, to Jack here, that is scarcely six months old. He is a 
healthy, vigorous fellow, and occupies quite as much of people’s time 
and attention as he deserves. As to “ education,” if he live to be its 
progressive subject, it may be much better than the ordinai‘y quality of 
that article, and yet far enough from “ perfect.” If, however, it coul^ be 
near perfection, I know too much of human nature to be very sanguine. 


LXXXII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Bourton, 1810. 

.... You say there are “ materials lying within you (as well as 
around you) inefficient, and but little known.Why are they ineffi¬ 

cient ? I must take the liberty of saying, you are bound to make them 
efficient. Were they beyond the moon or so, there were no duty in the 
case ; but as lying within you, they are in some way or other of the 
nature of a talent, for which you are made accountable. For the rest, 
your dissertation, or rather, as I suspect, your philippic against the circle 
in which you move, is too sadly just. They do not derive from your 
presence half, nay, not a tenth part of the advantage they might, and 
would, if they were thoughtful and docile. But you abdicate, emphati¬ 
cally, the right to complain when you advert to that most stupendous 
instance of but partial efficiency—Him that shone a light in darkness, 
and “ the darkness comprehended it not.” At the same time, each of 
the “ lesser lights” should be carefully trimmed, and every possible ac- 





LETTS US. 


277 


cession made to its means of burning and shining, however small a 
sphere of illumination it may be able to create in so dark and thick an 
atmosphere. 


LXXXIIl. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Bourtoriy JVovemhcr 21, 1810. 

My dear Friend, — .... If I had been in the habit of writing to 
Battersea twice a week, I suppose an hour would quite suffice to run on 
a sheetful; the longer the interval, the less one seems to know what one 

has to say.My wife and the brat are in good health. The latter 

grows, frisks, and indicates the decent symptoms of approacliing to 
something of an intelligent nature ; though it is, to be sure, rather a 
slender sign to be so full of exceeding wonderment at the knocking of a 
hammer, the ringing of glasses, or a blazing stick. But doubtless I, 
and even you, were once at this very same pass. He is degenerate, 
physically, from the genuine Yorkshire quality, for he does not walk yet, 
at an age at which I, and three more of us in succession, were able 
to march and tight. His elders keep strictly at home, save that I 

frequently go out hither or thither of a Sunday.One of the 

places I have had most frequently to go to, is a town about ten miles 
hence, where one worthy individual, a tradesman, has been the mean 
of commencing, and putting in a most hopeful train, a new preaching 
establishment. Within a few months a very neat meeting-house, to hold 
perhaps four hundred people, has been raised and covered in, and is ex¬ 
pected to be opened at the beginning of January. The man’s character 
and intentions are so unquestionably excellent, and some such undertak¬ 
ing is so evidently desirable in a rather large and very heathenish town 
(Winchcomb, seven miles on this side Cheltenham), that he has received 
the most marked approbation from all us zealous people in his neigh¬ 
borhood, and easily obtained a number of us in rotation to preach in his 
house, till the meeting should be raised. He is sanguine, and I think 
reasonably, that the expense (near 1000^.) will be so far discharged, as 

in two or three years not to leave a very oppressive debt.The 

meeting-house is now vested in trustees by a deed, of which one per¬ 
manent condition is, the freedom for what is called mixed communion, 
though this projector and conductor is himself a Baptist. 

.... It was a very serious disappointment not to see you here. . . 
. . But when you were given up, it remained among my expectations 
tliat I should before now see you in London. But, not to mention what 
is centripetal on the score of affection, I have each month seemed to 
have something indispensable to be done at home, and not a sufficiently 
definite business in London. I did, however, very positively resolve and 
promise for a fortnight at Frome and Bristol neighborhood ; but when 
the intended time for that came, I had reviews to write, money to earn^ 
and a long-pledged excursion with Coles for a few days to Worcester, 






278 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


where we experienced the most friendly attentions, and indulged an 
active curiosity in the direction of Malvern hills, and other noble scenes. 
I am fully convinced, that as an intellectual manufacturer I shall need 
occasional change of scene, for the purpose of varying my ideas, reno¬ 
vating my images of beautiful nature, and avoiding the total loss of all 
social dexterity and pliancy of mind. My cultivation of personal reli¬ 
gion is aided essentially by the preaching habits, which conduce also a 
little to keep up my acquaintance with mankind. 

Studies, so to call them, continue miserably desultory, and take most 
wonderful care to wind along the lower, smoother grounds, meandering 
in all manner of directions, to avoid the high and rugged regions of 
metaphysic, direct science, &.c. In all matter of faults, however, I am, 
for my age, wonderfully sanguine in my hopes of amendment, and zea¬ 
lous in all the resolutions relative to all the amendments. If there be 
one point I am less perfectly confident about, it is the practice of buying 
books. In this point, since I wrote last, I have been greatly tempted, 
and have moderately sinned. 


LXXXIV. TO JOHN SHEPPARD, ESQ. 

1810, 1811. 

.... I was lately very powerfully and suddenly struck (though cer¬ 
tainly not for the first time) with the simple idea—Now, there is some 
one state of ' character and plan of action the very best 'possible to me, 
under all the circumstances of my age, measure of mental faculties, and 
means within my reach ; the one plan that will please the Governor of 
the world the most, that it will be the most pleasing to look back upon 
at the hour of death, the most satisfactory to hear referred to at the day 
of judgment; and can I be so infatuated as not instantly and most earn¬ 
estly to endeavor to ascertain what is that plan, and then most zealously 
devote myself to its execution ? This idea strongly recurs to me in 
writing to my respected friend; and my expressing it to you in the form 
in which it struck myself, does not by any means imply that such reflec¬ 
tions will not be likely often to occur to your own mind. Only we are 
enjoined to “ provoke one another to good works and this must be by 
suggesting the ideas that can most powerfully stimulate our conscience 
concerning them. There is a conceivable mode of applying all means 
and advantages that a thoughtful mind, in its most solemn moments, will 
feel very certain must be the one that our great Master will most ap¬ 
prove, and on which he will one day the most emphatically pronounce 
those words, “ Well done, good and faithful servant.” 

.... Power, to its very last particle, is duhj. To have full inde¬ 
pendence for deliberating and for entering on the best plan for future 
life, imposes the indispensable obligation of proceeding, without delay, to 
the balancing and the determination. Those who cannot change tlieir 




LETTERS. 


279 


situation and mode of employment are bound to consider them as the 
allotment of Providence, forming their peculiar sphere of duty, in which 
they are to exert themselves faithfully, and to exercise patience and self- 
denial amidst and against involuntary feelings of dislike to the nature of 
that allotted sphere. But when a man has the full power, and is in the 
favorable season of life, to make a choice, having also the essential means 
for ^prosecuting the object of his choice effectually, whatever it may be, 
the mere fact of having been previously in one particular way of life sure¬ 
ly does not, of itself, fix on him a duty of continuing in it. This would 
suppose him absolved from the paramount duty of considering what is 
the best and greatest thing he might accomplish in life. Such a notion 
would be as gross a superstition as that of the Chinese. At the same 
time it should not be overlooked, that the knowledge and aptitude ac¬ 
quired by the practice of such previous employment are to bo considered 
as of the nature of a talent, of no small value, and ought, in all reason, 
to be the deciding weight, if the balance were, as to all other things, 
in equilibrio, between retaining the mode of employment and changing 
it. .... 


LXXXV. TO D. PAKKEN, ESQ. 

Bourton, February 7, 1812. 

.... Ill spite of so much good advice as you have received, you are 
still, I understand, at that foolish project of law. Pray now, what good 
do you expect to do ? On the grand estimate which a philosopher, phi¬ 
lanthropist, and Christian ought to hold of the value of life, and its 
noblest employments, what pleasure will it be toward the conclusion of 
it, to have to recollect all the toils, quibbles, and jabber of that inglorious 
profession ? Not to mention that many able men do actually linger out 
half a life, without obtaining, against the monopolists of the bar, even the op¬ 
portunity of fairly figuring olf in this jabber itself. As to getting money, 
making a fortune, and living in style,—surely a philosopher and Christian 
will and must hold such an object in contempt. It is quite time of day 
to make this c*ontempt a real and practical principle of life. It is in 
perfect seriousness that I make such remarks. I never think without 
regret of your sacrificing your life and talents to that profession, which 
has so little connection with the highest objects to which an able young 
man might devote his studies and life; and a profession too that is al¬ 
ready, and will continue to be, excessively crowded and crammed with 
competitors. Surely it is worth one serious hour’s consideration, whe¬ 
ther, at the approach of death, and in the ultimate appearance before the 
divine Judge, it would not be incomparably a more delightful recollection 
to have passed such a life and course of employment as that, for instance, 
of Fuller, or as that of Hall might be, if he were not so hopelessly 
idle in one respect, than the career of the most famous lawyer in the 
empire. 




280 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


LXXXVI. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ. 

Boiirton, April 30, 1812. 

.... No language I can easily find would exaggerate my most real, 
sincere, and habitual horror of the implements of writing. I long hoped 
that this, even though compelled practice, might be partly removed ; but 
now I foresee its prevalence to the end of life. I literally never write a 
letter, or a page, or paragraph for printing, without an effort, which I feel 
a pointed repugnance to make. And this circumstance I will not at all 
allow to be anything negative of the truth and cordiality of my friend¬ 
ship for a few individuals, including among the very foremost my old 
master, whom it would be a most cordial luxury to see and converse with, 
at this or any other hour, of any day of my life ; but writing—writing 
is one of the most grievous afflictions laid on this mortal state. 

I am very glad of so good an account, so much better an account than 
some time since I could have hoped to hear, of your health ; or rather 
perhaps I ought to say, I should be very glad if you w'ere likely to make 
a good use of the inestimable possession. 

I believe the last thing of the nature of letter I wrote to you, and 
most appropriately denominated by you “ trashy,” was something about 
this topic. It made not the slightest impression, you are careful to say, 
in disfavor of your adopted profession. Faith! it little expected to do 
any such thing ; nor would it have been in the least more successful, if 
it had been written in the best mode of Johnson or Junius. What effect 
had Andrew Marvell’s preaching, in his time, or would the preaching of any 
the like of him have now, on the congregation in St. Stephen’s Chapel ? 

But to be sober on this point just one moment, it is a remarkable and 
incontestable fact, that throughout the community, men of the legal pro¬ 
fession have, as a class collectively, a much worse reputation for integrity 
than any other class of men not directly and formally addicted to ini¬ 
quitous employments. There is a general and very decided feeling, 
that their consciences are of a looser texture, that they easily make 
their own rules of right and wrong, and that it is peculiarly hazard¬ 
ous and unfortunate to be thrown on their mercy, or to have anv im¬ 
portant points of interest depending on the discretion of their inte^ity. 
This is such an established impression in society, as could no have been 
made without an adequate cause founded in experience. Again (as I 
probably noticed in my last scribblement), the public and political con¬ 
duct of this class of men, as exhibited during this last melancholy stage 
of our history, furnishes a strong proof of the general baseness of their 
principles. It is nearly as a hody—\t is with a most extremely small 
number of exceptions—that they have supported all manner of corruptions 
—that they have fiercely and insolently opposed all manner of reforms— 
that they have gone with the ministry (such a ministry as this country 
has been under the last twenty years !) through thick and thin. All this, 
or the substance of all this, it would be mere quibbling and folly to attempt 



LETTERS. 


281 


to deny. And all this being so, it is impossible for a person whose opi¬ 
nions shall be formed clear of tlie influence of any specific bias or interest, 
to help being convinced that there is, either in the essence of the pro¬ 
fession, or in the established systematic spirit and mode, to which the 
characters of its members have reduced its practice, something extremely 
adverse to pure and exalted integrity, and something peculiarly destructive 
to political independence. The moral of all this is very obvious; if a 
man enters the profession unaware or unbelieving of its perverting in¬ 
fluence, and without adopting at the commencement, and maintaining in 
j)erpetuity, an extra moral discipline and regimen for preserving the 
rectitude of his conscience, there is too strong a probability that he will 
lose that rectitude irretrievably, as lie advances into the thickening in¬ 
fluences and associations of the profession. The moral might, indeed, 
be applied at an earlier step of the concern, making it an important 
question whether a man who is deeply solicitous about the moral and 
religious habits of his mind should enter the profession at all; but I have 
supposed that question affirmatively decided, and only suggested that the 
person who has chosen it had need be fully aware of the quality of the 
auspices under which he has chosen to place his character, and aware 
of what is indispensable to defeat their malignant influence. 

May I without hazard of seeming to depart from that reverence which 
I have ever maintained, and am resolved ever to maintain, towards an 
old superior and commander, hint, that I could not help, in some of 
the latest interviews, feeling a certain small impression, as if this influ¬ 
ence* had already begun to operate, and to give some of the indications 
of its nature, in a disposition—I mean in a small, incipient degree of the 
disposition—to put everything in question and doubt; to be more intent 
on seeking exceptions to plain and important principles, than willing to 
admit their importance ; to equalize the weight of little and secondary 
considerations on one side of a question, with great and primary ones on 
the other ; to extenuate, especially in political matters, the moral weight 
and bearing of principles and practices ; and to put the whole concern 
somewhat in the light of a game, where we must indulge men in their 
play, and not to be too Catonically or Puritanically rigid upon them with 
moral principles ;—in short, a disposition sometimes less seriously desir¬ 
ous to come to the real, honest truth and importance of matter, than to 
try what can be said about it, and especially what can be said in 
contravention of that which would ascertain, and stamp, and apply, that 
importance ? 

Doubtless my knowing (a knowledge quite general in society) that 
things of this kind are the prevailing characteristics of men in the legal 
profession, made me more prompt at surmises and perceptions ; but I 
was not perfectly solitary in this sort of perception ; and in this I do not 
allude to any con-domestic opinions. Now a truce to all this ; your 
brother is just come to take leave. I mostisincerely wish him health as 
the grand sine qua non ; and then, all success in his pursuits. Perhaps 


282 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


it is to be regretted that those pursuits have a preference to a certain 
other destination to which you allude, and to which I had some time since 
heard that he also had alluded. Mij regret on this point would be 
more decidedly expressed but for the doubt, for which I fear there is too 
much ground, that the kind and degree of physical effort required in 
frequent public speaking would be injurious to him, if not dangerous. 
If his health shall become, which I most earnestly wish, fully established 
during the few next ensuing years, I hope the question of reverting to 
this theological destination will become a matter of conscience with him. 

But indeed he may very well uniLe the two engagements, maintaining 
a moderate exercise of both ; for I am for preachers having, as many of 
them as possible, some other sources of emolument than the precarious 
one of their ministerial employment. 


LXXXVII. TO THE REV. DR. RYLAND. 

Bourton, May 20, 1812. 

My dear Sir,— Dr. Cox’s return, early in the morning, from a three 
or four days’ visit here, gives me the opportunity of returning, without 
having recourse to any public conveyance, the books you were so kind as 
to lend me, so long since that I am quite ashamed to think of it. In any 
similar case in future, there really must be some legal bond, with a 
penalty for not returning the article lent within a specified short time. 
I am the less excusable in this delay, from having in my present 
possession (sent by Mr. Fuller I believe) the second volume 4to. of the 
Ramayuna, and the first volume of Confucius, wanting only the first 
sheet, and including the whole of the biographical introduction, concern¬ 
ing the Chinese philosopher. 

I am amazed beyond expression at the achievements of these mission¬ 
aries ; and I am almost glad, that so considerable a portion of their 
labors has been expended in translating for us the most renowned works 
of the East; for thus we shall all, willing and unwilling, be brought to a 
right understanding of the vaunted wisdom of the orientals, which had 
left no need of such a thing as Christianity. As to the absolute value of 
what we thus obtain, one really begins to doubt, whether all that will 
ever be brought from the treasures of Asiatic learning, will be worth 
much more than the song of Chevy Chace. 

With respect to the Chinese, a grand object is gained by our having 
now fairly got a way opened into that hitherto formidable and inaccessi¬ 
ble language, for the introduction of the Christian truth by means of 
the translations that will now be easily made into it of the Bible, and 
other volumes of sound instruction. 

I most sinccreiy wish you continued health to sustain you in your 
unwearied and diversified labors in the cause of Christ; and am, with 
friendly remembrance to Mrs. Ryland, my dear sir, 

Yours, most respectfully and cordially, 


J. Foster 



lp:tters. 


283 


LXXXVIII. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ. 

Bourton, June 30, 1812 

My dear Sir, —It is a long enough time since I received your letter, 
but it can never be too long to remember favors and services, nor be 
impertinent to acknowledge them. I was not pleased with myself for 

having caused you so much trouble.Accept my grateful 

acknowledgment that there is, at least, one benevolent individual in the 
profession of the law. 

. . . . lam setting off', in a few hours, for North Wales, where I 
am to climb Snowdon, Cader Idris, &:.c. ; hunt the goats, roll stones down 
the declivities, and lose for a while the corrosion of the “ saeva indigna'- 
tio,” against wicked men in power; and, shall I say ? of my remorse, 
for having cruelly wronged, by unjust opinion and practical slander, a. 
meek, simple-hearted, innocent class of saints, distinguished externally 
by wig and gown. 

.... You are at Cobbett again. It is considerably amusing to 
see what an air of superfine moralitij (as Sydney Smith would say) and 
sanctified alarm you London gentry assume whenever he comes in 
question; just as if any of us care a straw for anything he says, on the 
ground of his personal morality^ or for any other reason than so much 
truth and intellectual force as his writings display. But you talk of his 
“ truths not less dangerous than his falsehoods,” which is just the kind 
of lingo with which people are endeavored to be, and partly are, per¬ 
plexed, frightened, and gulled, into an acquiescence with all the corrup¬ 
tions and mischiefs of the political state and course of things, while he is 
plainly and boldly enforcing a few great obvious principles, and illustrat¬ 
ing them by a perpetual reference to facts. He was plainly stating and 
predicting, all along, how our management as to America must operate ;— 
behold the consequence of desjiising all he said. He has all along urged 
the necessity of concession to the Catholics, and the abolition of flogging; 
he was “ a pestilent sower of sedition,” as you say, for his pains; but 
how odd it is that the whole state is coming round to him so fast! He 
j)redicted the whole process of the paper-money, and warned against aug¬ 
menting the evil;—it was all seditious and/a/se, for it has been substan¬ 
tially fulfilled. He has constantly represented, that a parliament con¬ 
stituted like ours, will scorn all checks on the waste of public money;— 
seditious and false—as witness the whole system of our outgoings, and 
not last nor least, the vast increasing accounts of sinecures and pensions, 
and twenty more such things ; all “ dangerous falsehoods ;” or are these 
exposures the “ dangerous, the equally dangerous truths .^” that is, the 
fact of these things being true is quite a harmless matter, but for Cobbett 
to tell that they are true, is very “ dangerous,” “ seditious,” and “ pesti¬ 
lent.” But I had all this over with VV-not long since, and I have 

not the least liking to go it over again. Only it amazes one, that Cob- 
bett’s dubious morality, and his being erroneous perhaps now and tlien 



284 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


in minor points (for in the great matters the business is too bulky and 
palpable for much deception or falsehood), should really have the effect 
to turn so much urgent and awful truth into such comfortable falsehood, 
that the nation may sleep quite at its ease ! . . . . 


LXXXIX. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Bourton, September 1, 1812. 

.... Your life and adventures resound through the “ united king¬ 
dom,” and really have been so moving and multifarious, that I should 
think you must have nearly the same crowded confusion of review as our 
old acquaintance, who is probably at this very time amusing himself 
among the curiosities of Moscow—getting the great Bell slung, perhaps, 
or some such thing. I greatly exult in the practical part of the business 
you are prosecuting, in so many directions, in the main effect of journeys, 
meetings, spoutings, and roarings; but, to be sure, the manner of it is 
infinitely abominable. In all time there surely never was a concern that 
brought out such a quantity of bad rhetoric—inflated, common-place, 
egotistical ostentation, nauseous cajolery, and reciprocated flattery, and 
mock-heroic pomp of triumph, for having crushed a spider, or marched in 
the desperate spirit of martyrdom through a bed of nettles. This last 
characteristic, especially, glares out to a degree intensely ridiculous. To 
hear some of the speechmakers, one would really suppose (but for the 
bombastic cast of the language) that one was hearing Wickliffe or Lu¬ 
ther exulting in having thus far braved the terrors of the Roman bulls 
and the Inquisition. Nothing of these charges, or but a trifle, attaches 
to you personally; and you must very often have suffered a provoking 
temptation to rebuke the rant of your occasional coadjutors, not to say 
any of your more permanent ones. . . . 


XC. TO HIS PARENTS. 

Bourton^ September 1, 1812 

.... The burning of the printing-office at Serampore has produced 
a great sensation in the religious public, and a multitude of very liberal 
contributions have been made to repair the disaster. This place is sel¬ 
dom behind in charitable exertions. Last Sunday Mr. Coles preached 
one sermon and I another, with relation to this event; a subscription and 
collection have been made, and the result is, I believe, between eighty 
and ninety pounds, contributed in this and two neighboring villages to¬ 
wards restoring the full means and powers of that grand oriental maga¬ 
zine for the warfare against the pagan gods and all abominations. My 
text was, Jer. xliii. 12, “I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods.” 

It is exceedingly gratifying, while wars and devastations and all man- 





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285 


ner of iniquities are deluging the earth, to observe vi^hat a most extraor¬ 
dinary spirit has been awakened by the promotion of knowledge and 
religion. It is peculiarly a happy sign for our nation, amidst all its 
weight of demerits and calamities. 

.... Of late I have had to preach every Sunday, and generally twice. 
It has not, as yet, brouglit back the old debility ; whether the prolonged 
continuance of it would do so, I do not know. Nor am I at all likely or 
inclined to engage anywhere as a stated, constant preacher to a congre¬ 
gation. Certainly the pecuniary resource that would arise from such an 
engagement would be a serviceable thing; but I shall be able to live 
without that resource, and there is a great deal more freedom attending the 
way of preaching I am now in. I can now preach or refuse to preach 
according to my own convenience, and am conferring obligations without 
incurring any; while the usefulness may be nearly as great, I should 
hope, as if I preached in a more stated way. The preparation for preach¬ 
ing in this way, too, takes less time from my other intellectual business 
than if I were a constant preacher in one place. It has also the advan¬ 
tage (so long as I am in this neighborhood) of taking me out into the air 
sometimes, by necessity, and so counteracts the bad effect of keeping 
constantly within the house, which I do very much. . . . 


XCI. TO HIS PARENTS. 

Bourtorii February, 1813. 

.... It is still gratifying to advert to the good designs that are going 
on, though their magnitude and the rate of their progress be so far be¬ 
hind the designs of evil. This disparity, however, we trust will lessen, 
and is lessening every day. The great loss at Serampore is now, it 
seems, more than made up by the public liberality ; so that that eastern 
warfare against Satan will have suffered but a very slight suspension, to 
be renewed with still greater zeal and means of offence. Every succes¬ 
sive year’s accounts from the missionaries there, is still more gratifying 
than the former. The last much surpasses any of the preceding. There 
never was on earth a set of men more faithful to a great object, nor, as 
to the principals of them, at least, more excellently qualified for it. To 
me it is constantly a cause of woaider, by what art, by what almost pre¬ 
ternatural faculty, it is possible for human beings to accomplish so much 
as they are incessantly doing. It is the utmost possible exertion of mor¬ 
tal industry, but doubtless it is also a very extraordinary measure of 
divine assistance. The doctrine of divine assistance, the gracious agency 
of the Holy Spirit, is infinitely consolatory to me—a doctrine without 
which I should sink into despondency and despair. What a long course 
of experience you have had of its truth and its value, and how emphatic 
a testimony you could, at each recollection of past life, bear to the pre¬ 
ciousness of this part of the gospel. It stands next to the doctrine of 



286 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


atonement by the sacrifice of Christ, in its power of animating the soul, 
and saving it from the overwhelming force of a world of evil. . . . 


XCII. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton, September, 1814. 

Dear and honored Mother,— I have little that is new to mention 
this time. Since I wrote last, however, I have been at Worcester, which 
is a considerable number of hours’ ride from hence. I was applied to, 
to preach a Sunday for the Baptist minister there, who is in a danger¬ 
ous state of health.There are a number of the faithful, one here 

and one there, just on the point of quitting the earth; and what a change 
it will be, to quit such a scene to enter immediately into the heavenly 
paradise. One is continually hearing of some one or other who has 
finished the mortal course, and of others w^ho are evidently nearly on 
the point of doing it, in the devout and grateful confidence of entering 
the eternal kingdom. They can have little to make them wish to stay 
on earth. But one is still willing to hope—indeed, cannot help rather 
confidently hoping—that before all the present inhabitants of the earth 
shall be called to remove from it, there will be such a transformation 
of its moral condition, that an aged Christian will have really somewhat 
less cause to be earnest for his departure than in such a time and state 
of things as the present. A good man, though glad to go to heaven, 
will nevertheless have somewhat less loathing of the earth that he is 
going to escape from, when he leaves it abounding in the blessed effects 
of Christianity ; when the people of his family, of his neighborhood, and 
of his nation, are become, or are rapidly becoming, the genuine, zealous, 
and holy disciples and servants of Christ. ^ 

Kidderminster, where Baxter preached with such marvellous success, 
being at no great distance from Worcester, I took a ride thither with 
one or two friends, and walked a long time in and about the church in 
which he preached, aud in which the people, it is said, are now taught 
no doctrines similar to his. His pulpit remained till within a few years 
back, when it was removed as an old-fashioned thing. We went to 
see it, where it is carefully preserved in the vestry of a Socinian meet¬ 
ing-house. An ancient-looking inscription carved on it, shows it to be 
nearly two hundred years old, being placed in the church many years 
before Baxter preached there. It is small, of oak, quite sound and firm, 
and is decorated with old carving, painting, and gilding, in a manner 
which must have been strangely gaudy ; insomuch, that, unless this was 
common in those days, one could almost fancy Baxter must have been 
displeased with so showy an object every time he looked at it. It was 
striking to stand in this pulpit, and reflect what a saintly and apostolic 
man had often occupied it; what an eloquence of piety had been, with 
almost miraculous efficacy, poured from it; and what the state of that 




LETTERS. 


287 


♦ 

preacher may be now ! It was impossible not to feel some emotions 
of sorrow at having been so little like him. and of desire to be more en¬ 
abled and animated to follow him as he followed Christ. 

With very great interest of a widely different kind, we viewed, at a 
place not tar distant, some stupendous iron-works, where we saw many 
operations of prodigious power, by means of engines; and, among other 
curious sights, gazed at a kind of cascade of iron, violently streaming 
down in a state apparently as fluid as water. The brilliance and the 
.^formidableness of this object were most striking. There were several 
chimneys nearly, we were told, three hundred feet high ; and there was 
a great iron wheel, which we were assured, on what appeared very good 
authority, is computed to revolve much more than three hundred miles 
in an hour. I am glad to have seen these various objects, as I am to 
have beheld anything curious and wonderful, on account of the new 
ideas they fix in the mind. By a proper application these become of 
great value to a man whose business is to be mental. 


, XCm. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton, October, 1814. 

My dear and honored Mother— . . . . The uoor people in agri¬ 
cultural parts of the land are generally extremely ignorant, and dull of 
apprehension. They are considerably more so than the people of manu¬ 
facturing districts. Field occupations, with their attendant and conse¬ 
quent habits, notoriously tend to stupify the mental faculties. So that 
one sometimes almost despairs of making such things as ideas palpable 
to their apprehension. One has often the mortification of perceiving, 
that the plainest, most pointed, and repeated representations of pure 
truth and invisible things, fail to reach, so to speak, the vital region of 
the mind. It is to many who do hear a sound of speaking, just the same, 
as to the mind, as if nothing at all were said. The thoughts are not 
taken hold of; they do not distinctly make themselves present one mo¬ 
ment to the understandings or imaginations of those to whom they are 
directed. 

From such an experience of wnat men are, one is receiving continual 
corroboration of the conviction, that nothing less than a divine power 
can effectually arrest and awaken men’s minds ; and therefore a strong 
incitement to invoke the intervention of that irresistible power. But at 
the same time, that power itself seems to prefer for the subjects of its 
operations the class of minds that are previously taught and influenced 
by education, and habitual attention to knowledge. This seems a gene¬ 
ral rule, though here and there the sovereignty of the power and the 
independence of its operations are evinced, illustrated, and honored, by 
the conversion of some of the most desperately uncultivated and unto¬ 
ward of the human race. 



288 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


It is exceedingly gratifying to consider, how much more generally 
the rudiments of religious and other knowledge will be possessed by the 
next generation than they are by the present; in consequence of the 
extension of the means of education, and the rapid and vast diffusion of 
the Bible ; so that preachers twenty years hence, will have a more 
pleasing office than they have had hitherto. Already some effect begins 
to be apparent. And the mere circumstance, that the hearers of tlic 
Christian ministrations are increasing prodigiously every year, in num¬ 
bers, is a happy, and a hopeful sign of the times. Aged Christians may 
justly be grateful for it as one of the consolations granted to the even¬ 
ing of their laborious day of life, that the Almighty gives indications, 
that he is going to accomplish the prophetic assurances of a grand im¬ 
provement of the world, and that the young pious friends they are going 
to leave behind, will, if they live to old age, have seen far happier times 
than their predecessors who are now on the verge of the world. 

There is nothing particularly new in this neighborhood, except the 
opening last week of a new Methodist chapel in a small town a few 
miles off, where I have often been to preach. I am very glad of it, 
however I may differ from their opinions ; for their active and indefati¬ 
gable zeal is sure to do good, incomparably more good, I trust, than 
harm. . . . We are all in good health. I prayed earnestly this morn¬ 
ing, and have often done so, that “ the goodness of God may lead us to 
repentancethat being attracted to him in devout affection by his 
mercies, we may be saved from the necessity of being disciplined to 
obedience and dependence by judgments of the severe order. 

( I am always sorry to think of you at the return of winter, which is 
now once more so fast approaching. One of the venerable persons to 
whom, and for whom I have so often before expressed this feeling, is 
now beyond the reach of winters, and all the worse evils of this world. 
How often he mistakenly expected he should never suffer another win¬ 
ter ; but there was an appointed time to realize his expectations ; and 
that time is come, and is past! How full of mystery, and wonder, and 
solemnity, is the thought of where he may be now, and what his em¬ 
ployments, and how divine the rapture of feeling with infinite certainty, 
that he has begun a never-ending life of progressive joy and glory! 
The consideration of this will be an animated consolation to you in the 
sojourn which you are left behind to finish; and I hope it will be an 
incitement to each of his relatives to wish and pray ardently, “ Let me 
die the death of the righteous.” 


XCIV. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton, December^ 1814. 

Dear and honored Mother,— It is such a gloom of winter, that I 
can but just see to write, though it is about mid-day. We have had 



LETTERS. 


289 


something very like a storm for a whole week past, in a constant series 
of violent winds and rain. It has occurred to me how dreary it must 
have been on your bleak hills, if there has been a similar season there. 
Having lately read a good deal of the accounts of voyagers, I am forcibly 
reminded what formidable scenes a multitude of human beings are now 
exposed in at sea. I expect to hear many accounts of perils and dis¬ 
asters on that element; for I have no remembrance of so long a continu¬ 
ance of tempestuous winds. How many times and occasions there are 
which, if they make one think of the world at large, make one think of 
it as a vast scene of calamity. And how strange and mournful it is, 
that men should, nevertheless, be so generally careless of availing them¬ 
selves of the Almighty refuge. I have just been inspecting a long and 
most interesting and striking account of the bold and often perilous enter¬ 
prises of a foreign traveller, during several years, in which he traversed 
many thousands of miles, often in v/ild and formidable regions, and I do 
not recollect meeting with even one single reference to a protecting 
Providence. He seems well disposed to take to himself all the praise of 
his safety and success. This sort of impiety I find very prevalent among 
this class of adventurers, with whose narratives I have been almost 
daily conversant for a good part of this last year, my literary task-business 
having been very much in that department. It is a kind of reading 
besides which I have had a great liking for from my childhood. You 
can recollect with what interest and eagerness, when I was a boy, I read 
everything I could obtain relating to the strange objects and adventures 
in distant regions, and how confidently and almost enthusiastically I 
anticipated and projected, that I should myself become a travelling 
adventurer, and see almost all the wonderful places and spectacles of 
which I read. 

A difierent lot was intended for me by the Sovereign Disposer; but 
the same taste will no doubt remain as long as I live, its mode of gratifi¬ 
cation being nearly confined to the reading or hearing of other men’s 
adventures and wonderful sights. And this kind of reading, while it is 
very entertaining, and on that account would be very tempting even if it 
were of no use, is capable, at the same time, of supplying the most 
valuable assistance to thought, and the most striking and useful illustra¬ 
tions to the religious and moral teacher, whether in preaching or in 
writing. I hardly ever preach without availing myself of something I 
have met with in books of travels; and remarkable facts, pertinently * 
introduced, will sometimes produce a striking eflect: they awaken 
attention, which is itself no small matter. 

While thus reading travels into remote and wonderful scenes, I am 
often struck with the thought, what a far more signal and important 
journey than all this awaits myself, and how much more marvellous the 
regions that will ere long be opened to my view; and therefore, so far 
as the passion for wonders is concerned, I may be content to wait till 
called to go on a mysterious expedition to some other world. Mean- 
20 


290 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


while, I earnestly hope and pray, that the intervening space of time may 
be very much and effectually employed in a solemn and judicious pre¬ 
paration for that greatest of enterprises. It is most striking to reflect 
how many of our friends, and the persons we knew, and habitually saw 
around us, have already gone. They do not come to tell us where they 
have been, and what they have beheld. Well, we shall not need their 
information ; we shall go ourselves into the unknown scene. And I 
humbly trust in the divine mercy, we shall be met and welcomed, at the 
moment of our quitting this world, by a friendly and powerful Guide, 
into whose hands we may gladly commit our departing spirits. 


XCV. TO MRS. BUNN. 

Bourton, January 28. 

My DEAR Madam, .My visit was extremely gratifying, even 

in spite of that tedious though trivial task which occupied so much of 
the earlier part of the time. I will take care next time (and might have 
taken care then, by a little previous management and industry) to be 
exempted from any such interference with social satisfactions—perhaps 
I should say duties, for I was ashamed not to call on my good friends of 
the humbler order. As a matter of entertainment I was very sorry not 
to be able to accompany the ladies on another excursion to see those 
most noble old friends of ours, the oaks at Longleat. 

On the Sunday morning, I heard one of the very wildest of the Wes¬ 
leyan Methodists—a man with the northern provincial brogue and 
grammar fresh upon him, and in point of intellectual discipline a perfect 
wild ass’s colt. By way of contrast I went directly to the Abbey Church, 
and heard a consequential looking ecclesiastic read a sermon sensible in 
its way, and partly directed against the assumption by one class of 
preachers of the distinctive denomination—Evangelical. At Argyle 
Chapel, in the evening, I heard a very highly sensible sermon from Mr. 
East. 

The effects of the season were not so far on their progress about 
Bristol as in your neighborhood. But I had no time to take much notice 
of the last lingering beauty, or for any excursions for the mere purpose 
of looking about—except once so far beyond Bristol as St. Vincent’s 
rocks, which, in an excessively cold and wet day, I contrasted with 
the magnificence of some of the scenes of North Wales. But even had 
there been higher rocks, and finer days, there was a circumstance capable 
of rendering them for a while matters of inferior interest. That circum¬ 
stance was no other than my falling once more, after many years’ interval, 
into the company of Coleridge, who was at the time lecturing and talking 
in Bristol. 

I could not conveniently hear more than one of his lectures (on 
Shakspeare), but it was a still higher luxury to hear him talk as mucl^ 



LETTERS. 


291 


as would have been two or three lectures. I use the word luxury, how¬ 
ever, not without some very considerable qualification of its usual mean- 
ing, since it may not seem exactly descriptive of a thing involving much 
severe labor,—and this one is forced often to undergo in the endeavor to 
understand him, his thinking is of so surpassingly original and abstracted 
a kind. This is the case often even in his recitals of facts, as that 
recital is continually mixed with some subtle speculation. It was per¬ 
fectly wonderful, in looking back on a few hours of his conversation, to 
think what a quantity of perfectly original speculation he had uttered, 
in language incomparably rich in ornament and new combinations. In 
point of theological opinion, he is become, indeed has now a number of 
years been, it is said, highly orthodox. He wages victorious war with 
the Socinians, if they are not, which I believe they now generally are, 
very careful to keep the peace in his company. His mind contains an 
astonishing mass of all sorts of knowledge, while in his power and 
manner of putting it to use, he displays more of what we mean by the 
term genius than any mortal I ever saw or ever expected to see. He is 
still living in a wandering, precarious, and comfortless way, perpetually 
forming projects which he has not the steady resolution to prosecute 
long enough to accomplish. His appearance indicates much too evidently, 
that there is too much truth in the imputation of intemperance. It is 
very likely he beguiles his judgment and conscience by the notion of an 
exciting effect to be produced on his faculties by strong fluids. I have 
not heard that he ever goes the length of disabling himself for the clearest 
mental operation, but certainly he indulges to a degree that, if not for¬ 
borne, will gradually injure his faculties and health. It is probable he is 
haunted by an incurable restlessness, a constant, permanent sense of 
infelicity. This has been augmented, doubtless, by the total deficiency 
of domestic satisfactions. 


XCVI. TO HIS MOTHER. 


Bourton, April, 1815. 

Dear and honored Mother,—. . . . My good wife has taken great 
pains with John, and he can now read readily enough, in any of the easier 
sort of books. Her health has somewhat suffered by the long harassing 
anxiety about the youngest child, during the precarious state of his health 
and life. As the fine season is coming on, I hope she will recover what¬ 
ever she has lost. What an incalculable measure of care it is that a 
mother has in rearing a few of these human creatures; and then to 
think with what perfect indifference the monarchs of Europe are at this 
very hour, devoting, in all probability, several hundreds of thousands of 
such creatures, reared quite to maturity, to die in battles and hospitals 
within the next three or four months! 

I may presume, that the season has been with you, as here, unusually 



292 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


mild, and so far indulgent to the infirmities of old age. There is here 
scarcely any remembrance of a spring so advanced in point of vegetation 
at the end of April. The apple-trees are opening their blossoms, and all 
is beautiful around. This is not, however, a favorable situation for see¬ 
ing nature to advantage; our views are so confined, and so destitute of 
anything striking and romantic in form. I often regret, especially when 
reading books of travels, with perhaps fine engravings of sublime or 
beautiful scenes, that it should have been my lot to spend so considerable 
a part of my life in a place so completely removed from the magnificence 
of nature,—from the mountains, the rocks, the torrents, the cataracts, or 
the sea-shore, the view of which I know, by transient experience, to be so 
animating and enchanting to the imagination. This has been not only 
so much lost to me in point of pleasure—that is ever a secondary consider¬ 
ation ; what I still more regret is the loss of what such scenes often habit¬ 
ually beheld, would have added to the treasury of ideas in my mind, ideas of 
great value for illustrating and animating the course of thought and dis¬ 
course, in all the modes of instruction—by writing, preaching, social 
talking, and even social prayer. If any considerable portion of life yet 
remain to me, I hope that Providence will so favor me with respect to 
place of residence, that I shall yet obtain a good share of this advantage, 
so important as I know it to be for the enrichment of imagination. I 
have had one valuable compensation for this deprivation, in the opportu¬ 
nity of seeing some of the most sumptuous and splendid books of voyages 
and travels, with engravings of many of the most remarkable objects and 

scenes in the world.This has really been a valuable advantage 

of my connection with booksellers and reviewing. 

It often occurs to me, when thinking of, and regretting not being per¬ 
mitted to see the striking scenes of this globe, how soon I shall be sum¬ 
moned to see things inexpressibly more striking and awful, in the un¬ 
known world to which departing spirits will take their flight. May what 
remains of life be above all things devoted to the great concern of being 
prepared for that inevitable and marvellous flight and vision. Which of 
us is to go first remains yet to be seen. The one of our number that 
had the longest dwelt on this earth has taken the lead, and has now be¬ 
held what is infinitely beyond all mortal conception. 

I can have no douk, that both you and my old friend S. T., amidst the 
daily weight of infirmity, find the promise fulfilled of strength equal to 
the day, and so you know it will be to the very last hour. “ He is faith¬ 
ful that has promised.” He is sure to take especial care of those who 
are comparatively soon to be with him in heaven. 


XCVII. TO MISS B-. 

BourtoHy August 22, 1815. 

Mt dear Friend,— We have been returned hither this nine or ten 
days, during which I have been repeatedly reminded by Maria, in a tone 




LETTERS. 


293 


become quite reproachful at last, of the kindness which requested to hear 
soon after our return, and as in all other cases, I have still answered— 
To-morrow. Most things she can compel me to do, within some tolera¬ 
ble bounds of time ; but to write, there I am beyond her power—that is 
a thing in which Fate alone can rule me. 

We extended our term of dissipation a full week beyond what I reck¬ 
oned on as the very utmost limit, when we were at F. So long as Hall 
was to be heard, and Mr. J. S. was expected to be seen, there was some¬ 
thing very plausible to be pleaded; but when both these gratifications 
were past, it was quite time for sober thoughts, and a return to the gar¬ 
ret ; but the event proved that there was nearly another week to be 
expended. On one of the days I took a round of about thirty miles on 
horseback, in company with a very clever and excellent young man, a 
barrister that is going to be. We went to Brockley Combe, Dundry, &c. 
Another of the days we contrived to get into the house of Mr. Hart Da¬ 
vis, the member for Bristol, to see several celebrated pictures. Though 
totally ignorant of painting, as an art, it was impossible not to be exceed¬ 
ingly delighted with several grand landscapes of Claude Lorraine, and a 
countenance by Leonardo da Vinci, intended for the Messiah previously 
to his incarnation—a countenance I should really think never yet equal¬ 
led, nor hereafter to be equalled, in painting or in reality. On quitting 
these rooms of enchantment, I could not help admitting the hint, that, 
in spite of all that philosophers have said, wealth has some advantages. 
Four or five of the pictures, taken together, are accounted worth, I be¬ 
lieve, j02O,OOO. Though not of so magnificent an order, we saw a num¬ 
ber of very fine performances of the great foreign painters, at a house not 
a mile from Dr. C.’s. A number of the landscapes were of extreme 
beauty, by Vernet, Ruysdael, &c., &.c. I cannot exactly judge whether 
I should, on the whole, like a room so illuminated for a habitual place of 
reading, musing, or, if I may use the word, study; but I think I should 
like it, for that it would do more good in the way of brightening and en¬ 
riching imagination, than it would do harm in the way of diverting 
attention. A considerable portion of another day I spent in examining 
the splendid part of the Bristol city library, where there are probably ten 
thousand volumes; but my attention was nearly confined to about a dozen 
—the costly books of engravings relating to Athens, Palmyra, Rome, &.C., 
&.C. Another portion of the same day, and some hours of another day, 
were spent in Mr. Cottle’s study, under benefit of special privilege to 
read a variety of MS. letters of Southey, Coleridge, &c. I received but 
a melancholy account of this last sublime and unhappy genius, who con¬ 
tinues the slave and victim, I now fear hopelessly, of that wretched habit 
which has already, in a measure, obscured and humiliated the most ex¬ 
traordinary faculties I have ever yet seen resident in a form of flesh and 
blood. His own reproaches, I understand, are more bitter than any that 
he can hear from a fellow-mortal; but still unavailing. Hughes tells me 
in mingled language of admiration and compassion, that he made, a week 


294 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


or two since in Wiltshire, at a Bible Society meeting where Hughes 
was, a speech of profound intelligence; only, as was to be expected, too 
abstract for a popular occasion. 

Hall was the grand attraction in Bristol. We heard him as often as 
six times, besides a speech he made at the public meeting respecting the 
National Education Society, at which Mackintosh was expected, but 
was unable to attend. There were fully four hours of close, dense 
speech-making. A great deal of good sense was uttered, and with less 
cajolery and impertinence than one often hears on such occasions. Hall’s 
acute and witty speech could not, unfortunately, be heard by one half 
the assembly. I was sorry Mr. S. could not haje been apprised of this 
meeting; but he lost still more in not being at Broadmead on the even¬ 
ing of the same day (Tuesday), where Hall made, I should think it 
hardly extravagant to suppose, the noblest sermon ever heard within 
those walls, or even within that city; the text—“ Hast thou made all 
men in vain ?” It combined all the elements of supremacy in religious 
eloquence. It was explanatory, argumentative, ingenious, comprehen¬ 
sive, and sublime; it was emphatically solemn and applicatory to con¬ 
science, with a pathetic earnestness and emotion toward the latter end, 
which was almost irresistible. He was himself, in one part of the con¬ 
cluding division, very deeply moved ; and there is something strangely 
striking in the unaffected and insuppressible emotion of a strong, firm, 
masculine, and intrepid person like him, with a temperament partaking 
much of that kind of hardness which does not feel slight impressions or 
gentle interests. We had him at Dr. C.’s one night, and a good part of 
next day, and I was in his company several times in Bristol. Company, 
however, he says, and I believe truly, he likes less and less each succes¬ 
sive year. With very great devotion, I apprehend there is_, almost a 
habitual shade of gloom over his mind; besides, that he endures so 

much corporal suffering, and is certain to do so as long as he lives. 

You may not have seen his book, “ Terms of Communionit is very 
able, and one should think conclusive and final; but one is not much 
pleased to see such a mind so long occupied on a subject giving so little 
scope or occasion for the exercise of his more eloquent thinking. 


XCVIII. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton, JVovember, 1815. 

Dear and honored Mother,— Since I wrote last I have been almost 
as invariably shut up in the house as if I had been a prisoner. I have 
been reading, in a cursory sort of way, a variety of things, in English, 
Latin, and French ; among other things a considerable portion of Virgil, 
whom I am ashamed to have never fairly read through since I was at 
Mr. Fawcett’s school. I do not know that I should now have particu¬ 
larly thought of reading him but for the accident of having obtained 




LETTERS, 


295 


possession of a particularly fine copy of him,, accompanied by an ample 
commentary, by a most learned German, who employed a great part of 
twenty years of his life in illustrating this poet. 

Some parts of what I have read have powerfully recalled the circum¬ 
stances and feelings of a period so long since elapsed as the time of my 
residence at Brearley Hall. That period appears long since, even dur¬ 
ing these recollections. How striking it is to consider, that I am now 
materially more than twenty years nearer to an entrance into another 
world than then! If I had then been sure of living till now, it would 
have appeared a very wide space for a certainty of future life ; and what 
great things (in a comparative sense) I should have confidently hoped to 
accomplish within it. But indeed, the uncertainty of that prolongation 
of life—the improbability of life being protracted more than four-and- 
twenty years beyond the moment of my bidding adieu to Brearley Hall, 
ought to have made me but the more earnest and diligent to turn every 
week and day to the best account. I have now to review that long 
period as irrevocably past. And 1 review it with great regret I have 
not, I hope, altogether lived in vain; but my attainments for myself, my 
usefulness to others, my service to God, have been miserably small, in 
comparison of what they might, with such means, and in such a spaco, 
have been. I have many gloomy musings on the subject, in which I 
can easily'represent to myself this and the other good thing which has 
been possible, but has not been accomplished, during that long space of 
health and privileges—the best part of life, beyond comparison. It has 
been a space of time, in all probability, worth much more in point of 
capability than all the rest of my life ; that is, all that preceded the time 
I left Brearley, taken together with all that may yet remain, even should 
I live to attain your present age, which is altogether unlikely. 

Nevertheless, so perverse and stupid is this human nature, that even 
these melancholy reflections, combined with all the solemnity of my 
anticipations, do not always suffice to rouse me to that earnestness and 
practical exertion which I feel to be, if possible, still more urgently my 
duty every day that now comes to me; every day which is lessening the 
perhaps brief remainder. Upon the whole, however, I hope I do feel an 
increasing force of conscience and religion, and therefore an increasing 
solicitude, that whatever remains of my time on earth may be so em¬ 
ployed and improved, that I may not, at the end, have the same feelings 
concerning it, that I now have concerning the last twenty-five years. 

It is one important advantage gained by the past time to be most 
powerfully and habitually convinced that divine aid is indispensable, in 
a very large measure, to our making the best and noblest improvement 
of life. That aid I shall supplicate every day that I have to spend on 
earth. 

My business is clearly before me ; what I have to do is to preach and 
write; which I must endeavor to do more and better than hitherto ; 
especially more in a religious spirit, with a more direct reference and 
desire to please God. 


296 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


XCIX. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton, December, 1815 

Honored Mother, —In this remote corner everything almost seems 
to remain as when I wrote last. Thus it is from month to month. One 
is often struck with the thought, how little one has a perception of, 
amidst the infinity of things that are acting and changing, at every 
moment, in this vast creation. But indeed, within a comparatively small 
space around one, millions of acts and incidents are occurring, of which 
one is perfectly insensible. What processes of nature, what movements 
of human minds, what agency of invisible intelligences ! What a spirit 
would that be that should have a perfect perception, comprehending the 
whole and every part, of what takes place within a very small portion 
of even one country on the globe ! What a stupendous intelligence, 
that should be able, in this manner, to inspect the whole earth, with all 
its beings and elements! But, then, how overwhelming is the idea of 
THAT ONE Mind, whose perception extends to everything, great and little, 
inanimate, living, and intellectual, in the whole universe, comprehend¬ 
ing, perhaps, such a number of worlds as it would require an angel’s 
faculties but to count! How utterly and instantly the power of thought 
is confounded and lost in any attempt at forming the idea of such a 
Being ! It is useful, nevertheless, to exercise the mind sometimes in 
this manner. It tends to produce humiliation and self-abasement, and to 
inspire a holy awe. But, also, it tends to inspire joy, and gratitude, and 
triumph, when we consider that this Being condescends to be the friend 
of humble, and contrite, and devout men ; that he has revealed himself 
as a pardoning and gracious God, through the mediation of Christ; that 
through this “ new and living way ” his throne may be approached with 
hope and confidence. And then there is the sublime idea of his taking 
the souls of his servants, at death, to contemplate him in a more intimate 
manner, to be expanded to an angelic and for ever enlarging capacity in 
that blissful contemplation and communion, and to receive to all eternity 
perpetually augmenting manifestations of his love. In such a view, 
with what emotions may you look forward to the termination of your 
mortal pilgrimage ! and with what grateful joy look back on that influ¬ 
ence of divine grace, which early in life persuasively compelled you into 
his service, and has preserved you constant in it ever since ! . . . . 

I still preach, one where or other, every Sunday; and there would be 
work enough of this kind within a small circuit hereabouts, for an ad¬ 
ditional supernumerary. I wish exceedingly' that there were in our 
societies a much greater number of such sensible and educated men as 
might be serviceably employed in frequent preaching, without being of 
what is called the regular class of preachers. 

My wish for this John would be, that he might become one day a 
zealous and effectual proclaimer of divine truth; just such a one as I 
have before mentioned to you in the instance of a higlily-cultivated 



LETTERS. 


297 


young man, .... who is lately returned from an excursion for im¬ 
provement through France and to Geneva. 


C. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton, March, 1816. 

Honored Mother, — .... Worcester is only a six or seven hours’ 
journey from this village. The surrounding country is, in spring and 
summer, very beautiful. In the road, between Worcester and this place, 
is that town of Pershore, where I spent a number of weeks so long since, 
previously to going to Ireland. Some interesting reflections were sug¬ 
gested to me in passing through it, and glancing over the course of the 
river Avon, on the banks of which I had so often walked in solitary 
musings, wondering what might be the appointed course of my future 
life in this world, and forming plans and resolutions. How little of these 
plans and resolutions has been accomplished ! those, 1 mean, which 
ought to have been accomplished; those which were of a nature inde¬ 
pendent of the places in which I might be cast;—those which related to 
the efforts, the improvements, the attainments, which were my absolute 
duty, loherever I might afterwards dwell or wander. How impossible it 
would have then been, when I traversed those meadows, by that stream; 
—how impossible to believe it, if any one could have predicted to me 
that, passing by the place twenty-three years afterwards, I should have 
the mournful consciousness of having accomplished so little of all I then 
was so sanguine in anticipating:—if my life and health should be so 
long protracted by an indulgent Providence ! No, I could not have be¬ 
lieved it. I did not then know so much of the depravity, the treachery, 
of the heart of man. 

Another thing I could hardly have believed, could it have been then 
predicted,—namely, that my life, if it should prove, for twenty years, so 
unprofitable, would be attended all the while, nevertheless, by so many 
favors of the divine Providence, so constant a train of things at once 
indulgent and admonitory. 

And still another thing,—it would have been at that time impossible 
for me to believe, if it could have been declared to me, that when I 
should have spent twenty years so favored and yet so unprofitable a ser¬ 
vant, I should not feel on the review, at the beginning of the year 1816, 
a much severer grief, a much intenser self-indignation, than at this hour 
I actually do feel. How strangely one grows accustomed to one’s own 
faults, and perversities, and sins, so as to have a criminal patience with 
them. Yet though I feel far too little on such a review, I do neverthe¬ 
less feel greatly indignant at this ingratitude, this indolence, this want 
of zeal, this wretched deficiency of every gi'ace and virtue of Chris¬ 
tianity. I do in come measure, and I hope an increasing measure, hate 
this indwelling sin, this cold indifference, this procrastination, this dread 



298 


LIFE OF JOHxV FOSTER. 


of taking up the cross. And I do, I hope I shall, each succeeding day, 
more apply to the almighty power; “ fly to the Lord for quick relief.” 
At last I hope to say, exultingly, “ Sin, the monster, bleeds and dies.” . . . 

We are all hereabouts, as everywhere else, deeply complaining of the 
times, and reproaching the bad men that preside over the state, and who 
manifest a scornful indifference on the subject, intent only to accomplish 
their own vain and vile purposes. But we are over-run with men just 
as unprincipled, in a lower condition. 


CI. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton-on-the- Water, May, 1816. 

Honored Mother,— The balmy influences of spring at length 
breathe into the room in which I am writing, and I have just been ad¬ 
miring the beauty of an apple-tree, and a few other trees now in full 
bloom. But this appearance has not, for a very long time, been so late 
in the spring. No one, scarcely, remembers so backward and ungenial 
a season as^ we have had this year. Snow has fallen within these few 
days. The consequence of this long rigor is, that now, when the vernal 
softness is at length come, the vegetation, with all its beauty, has come 
out as with a sudden burst; insomuch, that a very few days have made 
a prodigious alteration in the appearance all around ; the earth seems 
almost as if it had undergone a miracle, in order to make it a proper 
place of abode for a purer, better kind of beings. 

But, alas! the inhabiting beings remain the same ; a debased, irre¬ 
ligious, iniquitous, and miserable race. Nature has no gales, no beau¬ 
ties, no influences, to transform the depraved mind. The benignant 
skies, the living verdure, the hues of flowers, the notes of birds, have no 
power on selfish and malignant passions, on inveterate evil habits, on 
ingratitude and hostility against God. And it is all just the same, not¬ 
withstanding that the scene not only has so much beauty, and is such a 
manifestation of the divine power, but also is equally a display of the 
divine bounty, this opening beauty being a part of the grand process for 
tlie sustenance of man. 

What a base and odious thing is this human nature ! How multiplied 
and endless are the exhibitions of its abominable state ! All the in¬ 
habited world is overspread with them. I feel a peculiar interest and 
complacency in reading- (in the many books of travels that come into 
my hands) of wildernesses and ruins. It gratifies me to read of this or 
the other city or district; that whereas it once contained perhaps half a 

million of inhabitants, there are now not a fifth part of the number ;_ 

that there are towers, castles, and mansions, and temples, and streets, 
deserted, dilapidated, falling in ruins;—that the lonely traveller may 
traverse leagues and leagues of the region, and meet no face, and see 
no abode of man. I involuntarily exclaim, “ So much the better ; how 




LETTERS. 


299 


little there is, in that abandoned territory, of the abomination ami misery 
with which man is sure to fill every place in which his race abounds!” 

With something of this, mingled with other modes of interest, I read 
lately a small book, recently published, concerning the Ruins of Babylon. 
It is by a young man, whom I remember seeing at Bristol ten or twelve 
years since as a boy, remarkably distinguished by his eastern learning. 
He now resides at Bassora, only a few days’ journey from Babylon. He 
wrote this account after one visit of examination to the place of that 
proud city. The place is marked by enormous masses of bricks, the 
foundations of the vast edifices \<^hich, in Daniel’s time, towered aloft, 
amidst the stupendous accumulations of ordinary structures for human 
dwelling. There is now (as far as I remember) not a man dwelling 
there! In clearing some secret vaulted passages, he found several hu¬ 
man skeletons. What a striking sight this would be ! while a crowd 
of solemn recollections came over one’s mind. In one most enormous 
mass of bricks, in a great measure covered with mould and vegetation, 
he had little doubt he beheld the remains of the celebrated tower of Nim¬ 
rod. There is one part exposed, as a wall, and it is two hundred feet 
high. 


CII. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton^ August, 1816 

Honored Mother, — .... I am still very far from having worked 
]>ff my accumulated tasks in the reviewing way. I am sorry for having 
got so much into this kind of service ; it has its uses, but it has been in 
some measure a prevention of things that might have been more d?cten- 
sively, and more lastingly useful. I fully intend to withdraw, in a great 
measure, from the occupation, in order to attend to those more useful 
labors. But I have at the very least eight or nine months’ work on 
hand, some parts of which have been very long, and almost inexcusably 
delayed. I have no power of getting fast forward in any literary task ; 
it costs me far more labor than any other mortal who has been in the 
habit so long. My taskmaster complains constantly and heavily of my 
slowness and delay. Part of which is indeed, I confess, owing to indo¬ 
lence. I have probably said before, what is always unhappily true, that 
I have the most extreme and invariable repugnance to all literary labor 
of every kind, and almost all mental labor. It is the literal truth, that I 
never, in the course of the whole year, take the pen, for a paragraph or a 
letter, but as an act of force on myself When I have a thing of this 
kind to do, I linger hours and hours often before I can resolutely set 
about it; and days and weeks, if it is some task more than ordinary. 
About finding proper words, and putting them in proper places, I have 
more difficulty than it could have been supposed possible any one 
should have, after having had to work among them so long; but 
the grand difficulty is a downright scarcity of matter,—plainly the diffi¬ 
culty of finding anything to say. My inventive faculties are exactly like 




300 


life of JOHN FOSTER. 


the powers of a snail; and in addition, my memory is an inconceivably 
miserable one. This last is a peculiarly grievous circumstance in the 
business of reviewing books. I read through a volume, and though I 
write short notices of the matters as I go on, when I get to the end I 
find I have no manner of hold, in my memory, of the contents. I have 
to read the greatest part of it again, and some parts probably three or 
four times. This was the case particularly with one of the last books 1 
have written some account of in the Eclectic Review,—a splendid and 

very interesting volume about Ancient^ Wiltshire . 

.... The article I have referred to in the Eclectic Review, will, I 
should think, be extremely interesting to every curious reader, not from 
any quality in the writing, but because it contains the substance of the 

work in question, compressed into a comparatively small space.1 

did not mean thus to occupy my paper about a book, but really it is one 
of the most remarkable books I ever read, and the contents have very 
strongly taken possession of my imagination. 


cm. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton, October, 1816. 

Honored Mother,— One may wonder that in a world so full of 
changes, a number of weeks should ever pass away without supplying 
considerable materials of record and information. In a multitude of in¬ 
stances such materials have not been wanting. How many persons 
within the last month have had to transmit to their distant relatives or 
friends melancholy information, sometimes expected, often unexpected. 
No doubt this very letter, in the course of its conveyance to you, will 
accompany in the post various letters going to one place and another 
with the information of the death of parents or children, husbands, wives, 
or other relatives; and various letters relating accidents, calamities, 
sicknesses, or distressing experiences of the evils of the times. And 
then, glancing back to the long series of letters I have sent you during 
so many years, and imagining how many letters conveying the expres¬ 
sions of distressed persons have so accompanied, during that whole 
length of time, the letters conveyed from me to you, what cause I have 
to wonder and be thankful that my letters have so seldom had to convey 
melancholy accounts or sentiments ! what a life of providential indul¬ 
gence mine has been ! A life of health, a life of much favor from fellow- 
mortals, of never-failing temporal supplies, of innumerable intellectual 
and religious means and advantages, and nearly nine years of it passed 
in a happy domestic connection. I think I do not forget any day to be 
grateful to Heaven for this last circumstance. My dear wife is one of 
the most estimable, and one of the most affectionate of her sex. I con¬ 
stantly feel how much she deserves to be loved, and I love her as much 
as in the commencement of our happy union. I often tell her fondly 





LETTERS. 


;ioi 

how grateful I am to the Almighty that she is mine, and that .she has 
been mine so long; only regretting, as I told her this morning, that she 
had not been mine earlier in life. But that was as Providence ordered 
it,—the same Providence which ordered that my early partialities should 
not result in the conjugal relation. From all the merciful care of that 
providence during the past, I have very good cause to commit my way 
to the Lord for all the time that may yet be to come. In advancing into 
the darkness of futurity I will humbly and gratefully trust that the Guar¬ 
dian and Guide of my life hitherto, will “ never leave me nor forsake 
me.” And, the while, I hope to be found more faithful and diligent in 
his service. 

I have not yet got my sermon ready for the printer. The cause of 
religion is but in rather a languid state. It would be happy if the evils 
of the times were to work a religious effect, but I fear there are no very 
strong signs of this. By one means or another, however, religion will 
most certainly make its promised advances, and bring at last to the 
wretched human race a most blessed change from the condition they 

have been in through all ages.One of my friends is just returned 

from a summer excursion in France and Switzerland, and is going to 
betake himself with all diligence to the work of preaching. He preaches 
without any pecuniary reward, and just when and where he thinks he 
can do most good. Very few things have ever gratified me more than 
the course this excellent young man has taken. He has grown up 'per¬ 
fectly free from all the vanities common among rich young men, has been 
the better for all the scenes and varieties he has passed through, and 
dedicates himself to the cause of religion with a most serious, deliberate, 
and growing determination. It would be a most delightful thing to see 
a few of what we call gentlemen enter life in anything like such a 
manner. 


CIV. TO HIS MOTHER. 

Bourton [date uncertain]. 

Mt dear and honored Mother, —. . . . The divine Providence has 
continued indulgent to us in this house, our health having been prolonged, 
and each domestic advantage and blessing. It is my daily wish and 
prayer to be more thankful, and more willingly and actively obedient. 
How slow is the perverse mind to yield itself, even to the most powerful 
attractions of goodness—when it is the goodness of the supreme Being! 
The greatest of all his acts of goodness is to “ give a new heart, and 
renew a right spirit within us.” 

Though nothing unusual has taken place within our w^alls, a field two 
or three hundred yards from the house has presented to me a very striking 
spectacle. In digging for gravel there have been found in different situa¬ 
tions, a number of human skeletons. I have seen as many 0.3 four of them 
uncovered. One of them was within a rude structure of stones, placed 






302 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


somewhat in the form of a coffin. Another seemed to have been in some 
kind of coffin of wood, as there were several very large iron nails, and an 
extremely small bit of decayed wood. About the others there were no 
stones nor relics of vvmod. They were in each instance complete, there 
being very little decay, excepting that the bones, of course, were in a 
state of separation from one another, and that the skulls were too brittle 
to be taken up perfectly whole. The teeth were in as perfect preserva¬ 
tion as when the bodies were deposited. One set was remarkably fine, 
and being but little worn, indicated that the person was young, though 
of full growth. In another instance, a considerable number had been lost 
before the person’s death, and the remainder were so much worn down, 
as to indicate a person of very considerable age. The stature or other 
dimensions did not appear to be materially different from the present 
state of the race. There were no coins, weapons, or other circumstan¬ 
ces to assist curiosity in the inquiry after the dates of their interment. 
The most natural conjecture is that they might be Romans, as they were 
very near the mound of a large Roman camp, as it is judged to be. 
Other skeletons have at various times been found in these fields. One 
circumstance with respect to those just now found would seem to indicate 
that they were the people of pagan times;—they were placed mostly in 
a direction north and south ; whereas the popish Christianity, had it then 
been in the country, would undoubtedly have prescribed most authoritatively 
that they should have been laid east and west. It may therefore be 
fairly conjectured that they have lain quiet and unknown in these beds 
of dust much more, at any rate, than a thousand years. In those beds, 
though now in a broken and dislocated state, they are again deposited, 

excepting some fragments that I and Dr. S-took away, consisting 

of several jaws and portions of skulls. 

I have been extremely struck and interested by these spectacles, 
which I was glad to have an opportunity of seeing. They have much 
more power over the imagination than the bones that may sometimes be 
seen in opening or digging graves in our churchyards. To the idea of 
death, and human beings departed, is added, in this case, that of an 
unknown antiquity, that of the wonderful lengths of time which they 
have lain unseen and silent under the footsteps of many long generations 
in succession. The mind is absorbed in musings, inquiries, and wonder- 
ings, who they were, what were their language, religion, habits of life, 
personal appearance; what kind of people they were that inhabited the 
place around at that time. There is added the solemn idea, which occurs 
at the sight of any such spectacles of more modern date, that some¬ 
where there exists at this moment, a soul that once inhabited this 
deserted form. 

.... Here the gloom of approaching winter is corning fast upon us; 
and judging by the manner in which it affects one in even the vigor of 
life and health, I can partly imagine how it must affeK you. I trust you 
will find the full effects of tlie consolations of piety, and the powers of 


LETTERS. 


303 


faith. .... I earnestly wish and pray that we may all of us be devoted 
progressively more and more to Him who is our present hajjpiness and 
our eternal life. 


CV. TO THE REV. THOMAS LANGDON. 

Bourton, June 18 , 1817 . 

My dear Friend,—You may very justly think it a little strange that 
your most friendly letter should remain so long unanswered, even though 
you should at any time have chanced to hear of my bad reputation with 
respect to correspondence. In the present instance, however, a very 
few words will make out a tolerable exculpation for me. I am just 
returned, after nearly a month’s absence from home; the latter part of it 
spent in such uncertain rambling, that your letter could not have been 
transmitted to me with any confidence of its finding me at any particular 
place. It therefore remained till my return. I am sorry for this, but 
will hope it may not cause you any serious inconvenience with regard to 
the arrangements for that public concern on account of which "it was 
written. 

My dear and highly respected old friend will readily believe that the 
invitation it conveys to me gratifies all those feelings towards him and his 
domestic companion, and their circle of friends, which have perfectly 
survived so long an absence, and will survive to the end of life. But my 
acceptance of it is prevented by a combination of circumstances too 
insignificant to be recounted in detail, but all together forming an insur¬ 
mountable obstruction. Some of them relate to very long engagements 
and tasks, of which I really must acquit myself within a short time to 
come, or incur much inconvenience and some discredit. I have, besides, 
an extreme difficulty and reluctance, which but increases with advancing 
life, to sustain any material part on important public occasions ; and in 
addition, there are a number of deterring feelings and considerations 
arising from the changes which time and death have made in my native 
place. 

You will have no difficulty in obtaining, nearer home, a better coadju¬ 
tor in the interesting service you have in expectation. But, indeed, little 
will be wanting in addition, when you have the exertions of unquestiona¬ 
bly the foremost preacher in the world. I am very glad that Hall has con¬ 
sented to be with you. I sincerely wish you every concurring favorable 
circumstance, and the utmost success in the intended institution. 

I am greatly interested by the information concerning yourself and 
your family, and very grateful for the expressions of friendly regard from 
you and my dear old friend Mrs. Langdon. It pleases me too, not a lit¬ 
tle, that Mary can entertain what I may call a traditionary kindness for 
me. How vividly I recall at this moment the luxury of toying with her, 
and carrying her about the house, when she had been but a short time 




304 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


an inhabitant of the world in which she has now lived long enough to 
have her youthful visions of felicity, and long enough to discover, or at 
least to suspect, that those flattering visions contain no small portion of 
delusive promise. Yet I hope the great Benefactor intends her as much 
felicity in this short life as can be imparted by piety, combined with the 
affection of the relatives and friends with whom she shall spend it. May 
it be long, and healthy, and useful. The same I wish for the six others 
that Heaven has spared you of the twelve. How much painful emotion 
it must have cost to surrender in succession Jive to him that gave them. 
Yet I am most confident that now^ in thinking what a world they have 
left, and to what a world they are gone, both you and their other affec¬ 
tionate parent feel a very, very great preponderance of the consolatory 
over the mournful feeling. 

I should have been glad, my dear friend, to have heard a better account 
of your health. I earnestly hope a merciful Providence will support 
you in a capacity of doing good to your family and your congregation 
for a number of years to come,—I would say for many years yet to come. 
And I trust we shall all, through whatever term of life yet remains to us, 
be still more earnestly devoted to Him, into whose presence we hope to 
go when it shall terminate. 

What a length of retrospect it is back to the time that I used to mingle 
with so much delight in your society, your discussions, and vivacities ! 
The ideas that arise in the review of that most animated period, and of 
all the stages since, are far too numerous for any attempt to note a hun¬ 
dredth part of them here. I do promise myself that I shall yet spend 
some days in the well-remembered scene of those remote years, and, 
with you and Mrs. L., make our comparisons. 

It is now many years since I just saw her and Mary one short moment 
at the end of a bad sermon I preached at Bristol; and I was extremely sorry 
that their appointment to leave Bristol early the following morning, 
made it impossible for me to have the pleasure of a real interview. 

I meant to say a few things about myself, but an intrusion has left me 
but one moment to the post hour, and I think I ought not to delay the 
reply so much as one day longer. I have general good health. The 
physical cause which about ten years since compelled me, most reluctantly, 
to give up preaching entirely for a considerable time, remains now but in 
so small a degree that I preach every Sunday, sometimes once, oftener 
twice, in the most irregular way; sometimes in the meeting-houses in 
the district, sometimes in school-rooms and barns. 

.... I am in a great state of doubt and balancing whether to remove 
near Bristol; in which case I should preach oftener at Downend, which 
I dare say you remember. 

I have been happy, very happy in a domestic union nearly ten years. 
We have three children and have lost two. My wife remembers you, 
and is ready with her friendly wishes. I should be very glad to hear 
from you at any time you could spare the space to fill a large sheet with 



LETTERS. 


305 


information respecting yourself, your family, and those old friends, of 
whom I cannot hope to find tliat all of them continue in the world. . . . 
Yours, most cordially. 


J. Foster. 


CVI. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

Bourton, October 31, 1817. 

.... As to this book of Alps, torrents, and ices.I should 

have sent it several days since, but from the very onerous and engrossing 
business of making up a great number of packages of books for the tran¬ 
sit toward Bristol. That business is, within a trifle, completed, a day 
or two since. They are now all gone, and about arrived at their desti¬ 
nation, but two or three dozen of volumes. They have constituted one 
entire wagon-load, and a material portion of two others. I was myself 
hardly aware of the quantity which had been brought by degrees into 
this dark den, till they were thus summoned all out from their obscure 
lodgments in chests, corners, and dust; whence they have come forth, 
reproaching me with an expense carried, for a 'Succession of years, be¬ 
yond all conscionable bounds. . . . But I have told you positively, that 
I am now going to adopt a decided reform. I must of necessity do so, 
whether I would otherwise choose it or not. The book herewith sent 
you, forms a fine poetical finish to so extravagant a course; and it is yet 
to be 'paidfor, as it can; I question if I dare ever tell you the price. 

You will find it a thing that may boldly brave criticism. It seems to 
me the most exquisite thing of its class that I have ever seen. It is, by 
its subject, a good match and counterpart to the other which I had the 
pleasure of lending you —icij mountains contrasted with burning ones. 
But you will readily perceive that this is of very considerably more re¬ 
fined and delicate execution than Hamilton’s. 

With a softness which I have never seen equalled but in the best 
water-color paintings, it has an admirable distinctness and precision of 
delineation, insomuch that the small human figures, goats, horses, &.C., &c., 
will bear inspection through a considerably magnifying glass. This is 
owing, in good part, to the very fine engraving which forms the basis on 
which the colors are laid. Its defect is the want of about fifty pages of 
letter-press description, in French, which accompanied the plates at their 
publication, but which, from what cause I have no guess, are much 
oftener wanting than inserted in the copies on the continent—as the 
bookseller, a man of character, I believe, assures me he knows to be the 

case.Each plate has the pompous circumstance of a dedication 

to some high personage or other. This, however, tended to insure their 
being all executed with great care. One among the latest is inscribed 
to the unfortunate Louis XVI., in the year 1793, which proves that the 
work was long in publishing, for the publication commenced soon afte 
21 





306 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


1780. WolfF, the draughtsman of the greatest number of them, was a 
landscape painter of Iiigh reputation, and I have seen the testimony of 
the very celebrated naturalist and philosopher, Baron Haller, that the 
drawings were of the highest merit in point of fidelity; and he had 
observantly traversed the scenes, he says, a number of times. 


evil. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

Downend, May 5, 1818 

My very worthy friend and brother-in-law. Dr. Cox, is in a state which 
reduces to these very three months the utmost calculation for his life, in 
the opinion of his medical friends, and I should feel a long absence and 
excursion of amusement, just at such a season, incompatible with the 
interest and attention justly claimed by such a situation, to say nothing 
of the'many obligations I owe to his kindness. The progress of his 
decline to his present condition has been through constantly aggravating, 
and recently quite dreadful, suffering, from some malady still very 
uncertain to medical judgment, but probably the heart or its immediate 
vicinity. He has intervals of alleviation, but the grand cause is still 
working on, and the only uncertainty of anticipation is judged to lie 
between a speedy and sudden termination, and a protraction of extreme 
and frequently recurring sufferings through a space of several months. 

.... The fine book was delivered safe, and is now in its appropriate 
box in this garret. It does not, on re-inspection, appear of diminished 
excellence from my having seen many fine things in the interval of its 
absence, nor as compared with one or two most admirable and splendid 
things which have also found their way into this garret, and were never 
inhabitants of that other spider’s palace which I left six months since. 

.... But I have gone on beyond any fair proportion of talk about 
myself. I am also at the end of my time, as it will be desirable to get a 
place in Broadmead Meeting this evening an hour before the time for the 
commencement of the service. I have seen a good deal of this intellec¬ 
tual giant.* His health is better than some time past. His mind seems 
of an order fit with respect to its intellectual powers to go directly among 
a superior rank of intelligences in some other world, with very little 
requisite addition of force. 


* Hall. 


END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 




THE 


LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 


•J 0 H I F 0 S T E E; 


EDITED BY 


J. E. RYLAND. 


WITH NOTICES OF MR. FOSTER AS A PREACHER AND A COMPANION 

BY JOHN SHEPPARD, 

AUTHOR OF “ THOUGHTS ON DEVOTION,” ETC., ETC. 


IN TWO VOLUMES. 

VOL. 11. 


NEW YORK: 

JOHN WILEY, 1 G 1 BROADWAY, 

AND 13 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 


1849. 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER VI. 

PAOK 

Second residence at Downend—Relinquishment of the Pastoral office 
—Bible Society Meeting—Missionary Discourse—Essay on 
Popular Ignorance—Excursion to Devon and Cornwall—Re¬ 
moval to Stapleton—Lectures—Essay to Doddridge’s Rise and 
Progress of Religion—His Son’s Illness and Death—(1817— 
1S2G).1_15 


LETTERS. 


108. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes—Howe’s Work.s—Works of Graphi¬ 

cal Art.16 

109. To John Sheppard, Esq. Relating to a manuscript on war . 18 

110. To John Sheppard, Esq. On the decease of Mrs. Sheppard . 19 

111. To John Easthope, Esq. Essay on Popular Ignorance . . 20 

112. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Second edition of the Essay on 

Popular Ignorance.’. . 21 

113. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. Missionary discourse, 2d edition 23 

114. To the Rev. John Fawcett. On the uselessness of monuments 28 

115. To John Sheppard, Esq. ....... 29 

116. To the Rev. John Fawcett. Changes of residence—Monuments 

in Westminster Abbey.30 

117. To the Rev. Josiah Hill .32 

118. To B. Stokes, Esq. New edition of the Essays . . .33 

119. To B. Stokes, Esq. Visit to Haverford West ... 34 

120. To Joseph Cottle, Esq. . .35 

121. To the Rev. Josiah Hill .36 

122. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. On Mathematical and Classical Studies 37 

123. To Mr. J. W. Hill 38 

124. To the Rev. Josiah Hill ........ 40 

125. To the Rev. Josiah Hill .41 

126. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Baxter’s Life.41 

127. To the Editor. On a translation of Pascal’s Thoughts . . 42 

128. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Miss Saunders—Parliamentary debate 

—Plunkett—Tierney—Brougham.42 

129. To the Editor . .43 

130. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Literary labor—Arminian'tenet of suffi¬ 

cient grace . . . . . . . . . . 44 

131. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Dr. Ryland’s death and funeral . 45 







iv 


132. 

133. 

134. 

135. 

136. 

137. 

138. 

139. 

140. 

141. 

142. 


Tne 


143. 

144. 


145. 

146. 

147. 

148. 

149. 
xl50. 

151. 

152. 

153. 

154. 

155. 

156. 

157. 

158. 

159. 

160. 
161. 

163, 


CONTENTS TO VOL, II. 


PAGE 


To the Editor. On book-collecting, &c. . . . 46 

To B. Stokes, Esq. Failure of Welsh banks . . . .47 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Illness of Mr. James Hill . , 48 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Essay on Doddridge’s Rise and Progress 

—Hall’s preaching.49 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Death of Mr. James Hill , . .51 

To the Rev. W. Anderson.53 

To his Son .......... 54 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Consolation on the decease of the 

young , ... . 57 

To John Bullar, Esq. ....... .59 

To John Bullar, Esq. Last illness and death of his Son , 60 

To Mrs. Saunders. On the same event.63 


CHAPTER VII. 

Serampore Controversy—Mr. Hall’s Settlement in Bristol—Dis¬ 
senters’ Ordination—Catholic Emancipation—The Reform Bill 
—(1827—1832). 66—82 


LETTERS. 


To J. B. Williams, Esq. The Life of Philip Henry . . 82 

To John Easthope, Esq., M.P,—Canning—Catholic Emancipa¬ 
tion .83 

To the Rev, Josiah Hill.86 

To John Purser, sen.. Esq. ....... 86 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Reflections on his Son’s death , . 88 

To Benjamin Stokes, Esq. Instance of sudden death—Dr. Marsh- 
man . ........ 89 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill.91 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill • • .92 

To John Purser, jun.. Esq. Domestic changes—The Serampore 

missionaries . 93 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill ....... 96 

To the Rev, Josiah Hill. On the death of Mrs. Hill . . 97 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill. On the same .... 98 

To John Easthope, Esq. Catholic Emancipation . . . 100 

To the Rev. Josiah Hill . , ... 101 

To B. Stokes, Esq. Serampore.. 101 

To B, Stokes, Esq. Reasons for declining to preach at Worcester 102 
To John Purser, jun.. Esq. On Dr. Marshman—Duke of Wel¬ 
lington’s policy towards Ireland ...... 103 

To Joseph Cottle, Esq.—On the Established Church and Dissent 107 

To Dr. Stenson.. . .117 

To the Rev, John Fawcett . . , . , ^ .118 

To B. Stokes, Esq. Death of Dr. Okely—Dr. Chalmers’s visit to 
Bristol .. ,120 






CONTENTS TO VOL. II. 


V 


164. To J. Purser, Esq. Death of Mr. Purser, sen.- 

—O’Connell. 

165. To the Rev. Josiah Hill .... 

166. To the Rev. John Fawcett .... 

167. To J. Purser, Esq. 

16S. To Dr. Stenson. 

169. To the Rev. Josiah Hill .... 

CHAPTER VHI. 

Illness and death of Mrs. Foster—Mr. Anderson—Journey to Wales 
—Mr. Hughes—Rammohunroy—Letters on the Church—On: the 


Ballot—Eclectic Review—Mr. Fawcett (1832—1838) . . 129 

LETTERS. 

170. To the Rev. Thomas Coles—Mrs. Foster’s funeral . . . 146 

171. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Coincidence in their domestic trials 147 

172. To the Rev. John Fawcett. Character of Mrs. Foster . . 148 

173. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Reflections on Mrs. Foster’s decease 143 

174. To Sir J. Easthope, Bart. Ireland church reform—Religious ad¬ 

monitions . . . . ..150 

175. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. On religious assurance as held by the 

Methodists.153 

176. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. 'Bx\xckex''s Historia PhilosophicB —Hades 153 

177. To Mrs. Anderson. On Mr. Anderson’s death .... 155 

178. To the Rev. Joseph Hughes. A farewell letter, written shortly 

before Mr. H.’s death . . . . . . . .155 

179. To the Rev. Dr. Carpenter. On the opinions of the Rajah Rum- 

mohunroy . ..157 

180. To Miss Sheppard (Northampton) .159 

181. To John Sheppard, Esq. On Poetry—The intermediate state 160 

182. To the Rev. Dr. Leifchild—Character of Mr. Hughes . . 161 

183. To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle—The Established Church 

and the Voluntary Principle ...... 163 

184. To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle—The Evangelical Clergy 169 

185. To the Rev. Thomas Coles, on the death of his daughter . . 175 

186. To the Rev. John Fawcett. 176 

187. To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle—The Ballot, No. 1. . 178 

188. To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle—The Ballot, No. 2. 182 

189. To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle—The Ballot, No. 3. . 187 

190. To Mrs. Hannah More.191 

191. To the Rev. Josiah Hill—Politics—The Watchman . . . 192 

192. To H. Horsfall, Esq..• .193 

193. To John Easthope, Esq. The Morning Chronicle—Popery . 194 

194. To B. Stokes, Esq. .196 

195. To John Easthope, Esq.196 

196. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. On Book-collecting . . 197 

197. To the Rev. Josiah Hill 198 


—State of Ireland 


PAGE 

122 

124 

125 

126 
127 
127 





VI 


CONTENTS TO VOL. II. 


PART 


198. To John Purser, Esq. 199 

199. To Mrs. Stokes . . . . . . ." . 201 

200. To J. Wade, Esq.—Universal Suffrage.202 

201. To the Rev. Josiah Hill ........ 202 

202. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. On the duty of Christians in reference 

to public affairs ........ 203 

203. To J. Purser, jun.. Esq. . . .... 204 

204. To the Rev. John Fawcett . ..... 206 

20.9. To R. Stokes, Esq. .208 

20G. To the Rev. Josiah Hill ........ 209 

207. To B. Stokes, Esq..210 

208. To James Fawcett, Esq., on the death of the Rev. John Fawcett 210 

209. To the Rev. Dr. Price, on Judge Durfee’s Poem “ What Cheer T’ 212 

210. To the Rev. Thomas Coles . . . . . . ' . 212 

211. To Dr. Stenson—Michelet’s Life of Luther . . . *. 213 


CHAPTER IX. 

J..ast Review—Letter to Mr. Greaves—Visit to Bourton in 1840— 
Death of Mr. Coles—Visit to London in 1841—Illness—Last 
Visit to Bourton in 1842—The Chartists and the Anti-Corn-Law 


League—National Education—Last Illness and Death (1839— 

1843 . ... 215 

LETTERS. 

212. To Mrs. Stokes—On the Death of Mr. Stokes .... 233 

213. To the Rev. F. Clowes—On the intermediate State . . . 236 

214. To the Rev. Thomas Coles—On his Son’s death . . . 243 

215. To the Rev. Josiah Hill—National Education—Ireland . . 244 

216. To J. Purser, Esq.—O’Connell—Oxford Tracts . . . 247 

217. To Sir C. E. Smith, Bart.—On the Established Church and Dis¬ 

senters 248 

218. To Sir C. E. Smith, Bart.—The Nonintrusionists in Scotland— 

Dr. Arnold’s Letters—the Reform Bill—Church Rates . . 250 

219. To James Fawcett, Esq.—On the character of the late Dr. Faw¬ 

cett .252 

220. To the Rev. Josiah Hill.255 

221. To the Rev. B. S. Hall.255 

222. To the Rev. W. Peechy—On the Millennium .... 256 

223. To John Purser, Esq.258 

224. To Mrs. Stokes.* . 260 

225. To the Editor ......... 261 

236 To a young Minister. On the Duration of Future Punishments 262 

227. To the Rev. Robert Ainslie. On Socialist publications. . . 270 

228. To Joseph Cottle, Esq.272 

229. To the Rev. T. Grinfield, M.A. Woollett’s engravings . . 273 

230. To John Purser, Esq.274 

^^3^. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. On the Death of Mr. Wade . . 275 










CONTENTS TO VOL. II. vil 

PAQK 

232. To the Rev. Dr. Harris—Observations on his “ Great Commis. 

sion On the progress of Christianity and missionary under¬ 
takings .• 276 

233. To Mr. John Foster.292 

234. To the Rev. Thomas Grinneld, M.A. Dissensions in the Esta¬ 

blished Churcli—Defective attention to Christian morals in the 
preaching of the Tilvangelical clergy.292 

235. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. . 294 

236. To W. L. R. Cates, Esq..295 

237. To the Rev. Josiah Hill—State of the Nation—Anti-Corn-Law 

League ........... 296 

23S To Mrs. Holbrooke ........ 297 

239. To the Rev. Josiah Hill—Agitation ...... 299 

240. To the Rev. Josiah Hill—Petition from the Methodists in behalf 

of the Scotcli Church ...... . 300 

241. To Joseph Cottle, Esq. ........ 301 

242. To the Rev. Josiah Hill. Wilberforce’s “ Practical View”—Dis¬ 

turbances in Wales . . . . . • . .301 

243. To Sir J. Easthope, Bart., M.P. ....... 302 

244. To Sir J. Easthope, Bart., M.P. (Mr. Foster’s last letter ; written 

ten (fays before his death) . ..... 303 

CHAPTER X. 

Miscellaneous Observations on Mr. Foster’s character . . . 304 

Notices of Mr. Foster as a Preacher and a Companion, by John Shep¬ 
pard, Esq. ..315 

Nine Letters to Miss Saunders, with a Memoir.339 

Advertisement to Joseph Cottle, Esq. ..341 

Memoir.343 

Letters.351 

List of Mr. Foster’s Contributions to the Eclectic Review . . 380 













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M E M 0 I R . 


CHAPTER VI. 

SECOND RESIDENCE AT DOWNEND-RELINQUISHMENT OF THE PAS¬ 
TORAL OFFICE-BIBLE SOCIETY MEETING-MISSIONARY DISCOURSE 

-ESSAY ON POPULAR IGNORANCE-EXCURSION TO DEVON AND 

CORNWALL-REMOVAL TO STAPLETON-LECTURES-ESSAY TO 

Doddridge’s rise and progress of religion —ms son’s 

ILLNESS AND DEATH. 

1S17—1820. 

• • Mr. Foster’s long practice in village preaching, and habitual 
endeavor to accommodate his diction and mode of illustration to 
unlettered congregations, might- reasonably have led him to hope, 
that in the scene of his former labors, he would not be wholly 
unsuccessful; yet scarcely six months had elapsed when the 
failure of his efforts was so evident, that he could not hesitate on 
the propriety of relinquishing the situation. Several of his more 
intelligent and serious hearers of the class whose benefit he had 
^ chiefly labored to promote, were withdrawn either by death or a 
change of residence; others ceased to attend, from a preference 
for a style of preaching more adapted to operate on the feelings 
than to promote a thoughtful piety; and of those whom habit 
brought weekly to their usual seats, several showed an utter list¬ 
lessness more depressing than their absence, which would have 
at least allov/ed the charitable hope, that they were deriving some 
benefit elsewhere. In communicating his determination to resign 
in a letter to Dr. Bompas, he remarks, “ It will be recollected I 
was very far from sanguine in commencing it, but I really did 
not anticipate quite so complete a failure ; I did fancy it possible, 
that a natural manner of speaking, that illustrations and pointed 
« • applications, tending to preclude the too usual dulness and for¬ 
mality of religious discourse, and that a language generally clear 
of hard or fine words, might perhaps engage in some considerable 
VOL. it. 2 



2 


LIFE OF JOHN ,FOSTER. 


degree the attention of even uncultivated minds; and indeed i 
think I have hardly preached in any other place where they did 

not engage it somewhat more than tliey have done here. 

It cannot be honestly denied, tliat by the application of a great 
deal of time and elTort, a more obvious and attractive mode of 
exhibiting religious subjects would be attainable (that is as a 
hahitiml strain, for some of my sermons I should perhaps consider 
as in this respect nearly as much adapted as I could well make 
them), but I cannot feel the duty of making a laborious effort to 
change my manner for the sake of attracting persons, to whom, 
after all, it would be less attractive tiian the very crudest exhibi¬ 
tions at the Methodist meeting—persons who are no longer in the 
way for being attracted, and who will, for the inost part, never 
come again in the way ;—1 cannot feel the duty, unless it were 
impossible for me to be in any place to which I should be more 
adapted, and unless I felt it a compulsory duty at all events to 

preach.On a deliberate view of the whole case, then, I 

am impelled to the practical conclusion, I have expressed above, 
that I must retire from the service within some short time. I am 
sure you and my other estimable friends will believe me when I 
say, that so far as my high and grateful regard for them is con¬ 
cerned, I shall execute the determination with very great regret. 
For a small circle of such friends, and such partial auditors, I 
cannot look elsewhere. Their value and their kindness will 
make me willing to protract a few months longer a service which 
I should otherwise feel the propriety of declining immediately. 

“ As yet I have no plan with respect to ulterior public employ¬ 
ment. That must be left to Providence, and the course pf time. 
In one way and place or another, I will hope to be made of some 
use to the best cause.” 

It was about this time that he was invited to take a part in the 
anniversary of a Bible Society meeting at Kingswood. In his 
reply, he explained to the respected individual by whom the re¬ 
quest was conveyed, the physical debility which of itself would 
form a valid reason for declining the service, and then added, 

After a clear exemption made out on a personal ground, it may 
seem almost impertinent to make any remark on the general sub¬ 
ject. And I shall allow myself but very few words in the way of 
suggesting, that according to the feeling of the great majority of 
the persons attending these meetings, there are too many speak¬ 
ers, instead of a scarcity of them, and a far too protracted in^ 




ESSAY ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 


3 


dulgence in making speeches. My own opinion, or taste, in the 
matter, may perliaps partake of perversity or whim, but I will 
acknowledge, I utterly loathe and abominate the prevailing spirit 
and manner of these meetings. From all I have seen of them, 
they appear to me to be, in a greater degree than they are any¬ 
thing else, exhibitions of vanity, cajolery, and ostentation. The 
ludicrous aping of the forms and ceremonial of the chief legisla¬ 
tive assemblies,—the rattling and clapping,—the sort of prize- 
speech making, in which it is often so palpably evident that the 
speaker’s object is just to shine ,—the fulsome dealing round of 
extravagant compliment,—all these give, to say the least, a farcical 
and operatic cast to the whole concern (in many instances, at 
least, I have felt this the irresistible impression), and form, in my 
apprehension, a flagrant abandonment of dignity, sense, and honest 
truth. That money is obtained, and the popularity of the good 
cause promoted, every good man must rejoice ; but he must lament 
the necessity, if it he such, that so much of the agency for doing 
this good should consist in men’s helping to inflate one another’s 
vanity, and turning important matters into parading show and 
exhibition.”* 

The correspondence in the preceding volume contains intima¬ 
tions of Mr. Foster’s wishes to be disengaged from the labors of 
periodical criticism, and to devote himself to the preparation of 
works of permanent and independent interest. Whether he would 
have overcome the aversion to the mental toil involved in author¬ 
ship (an aversion, reiterated so often in his letters), without some 
extraneous inducement, may be fairly doubted. The two produc¬ 
tions, which, after so long an interval, followed the Essays, were 
both in consequence of his being solicited to advocate from the 
pulpit two public institutions. His discourse on Missions was de¬ 
livered in September, 1818 ; and his sermon on behalf of the 
British and Foreign School Society (which he enlarged into his 
Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance), in the following De¬ 
cember. The latter work was published in 1820. In writing to 
Mr. Hughes, while it was passing through the press, he says, 
“ Thus far I have found more than half the original sentences 
cither actually faulty, or at least admitting of what I thought im¬ 
provement. The first composition was most tediously slow, and 
there is many a page, as it now stands, which has cost still more 
time and labor in the revisal than in the first writing. On the 

* To the Rev. Michael Maurice, May 20, 1818. 


4 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


whole, these last six months about, have been a season of very- 
great labor, and therefore very resolute self-denial,—no one can 
imagine how much both of one and the other. If in respect to the 
matter of emolument, it is as poorly repaid as in the case of last 
yearns ‘ Discourse,’’ v/hich was also a thing of very great labor, 1 
must even have recourse to the old principle of ‘ virtue its own 
rewardfor never was labor, in the lucrative respect, worse re¬ 
munerated. It is a far easier thing, I warrant, to assume a 
cajoling tone, and—‘ Why don’t you write?’—‘We should be 
glad to see you far oftener in print;’—‘ How can you satisfy youi 
conscience not to do more for the public good V —and stuff like 
this—a far easier tiling than to let go a few shillings when one 
has done something of the kind referred to. Yet many a person 
has believed himself administering the sweetest spoonfuls to my 
vanity by palavering me in this hypocritical strain. I have had a 
great deal too much politeness to answer, ‘ Did you purchase what 
I printed some time since V I have really let them go off with 
the double gratification of believing they bubbled me, and knowing 
they saved their money. 

“ The expression, ‘ if you have succeeded,’ in your letter, leads 
me to observe, that I certainly have succeeded in the main and 
substantial thing proposed, and professed in the title (of this thing 
in the press). I have given a broad, true, and strongly delineated 
picture of the intellectual and moral state of the mass of our peo¬ 
ple. It was matter of fact, and only required the power of placing 
in a strong light, and in proper order, what had come, and is at 
any time coming, within one’s own observation. No doubt, I have 
also been in the habit of catechizing other observers, some of them 
much more familiar, I confess, than myself, with the classes in 
question. I am quite sensible there is no great share of what 
would be called brilliance in this production,—I perhaps persuade 
myself that the subject was most unfavorable for much of that 
kind, but I am rather confident there is much force and truth of 
representation. And I shall have and retain a higher respect for 
my own than for the reader’s judgment, if he does not think the 
style better than that of most of my contemporaries. It has one 
quality which I must probably be content to perceive, or at least 
to approve, myself; for I do not expect any critic or reader to take 
due cognizance of it—namely, that the language is simply and 
absolutely formed for the thought,—is adapted and flexible to it,— 
is taken out of the whole mass of the vocabulary of our tongue 


ESSAY ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 


5 


just on purpose for the thoughts, and moulded, if I may so speak, 
to their very shape, with an almost perfect independence and 
avoidance of all the set, artificial forms of expression,—and yet it 
is not wild and wanton, but merely natural and free. But my 
saying this recalls to my remembrance, that an Edinburgh critic 
(in the Edinburgh Monthly Review) did seem to have a kind of 
clumsy apprehension (in the ‘ Discourse,’) of the quality which I 
have chosen to describe as a merit in style; and he had the good 
taste to take it for a fault, and identified it, if I recollect, with the 
lawless dashing and affectation of modern would-be-fine writing. 
But all this is exceedingly foreign to the monitory topics of your 
letter. 

“You are afraid that the production cannot have escaped some 
of the defilement of radicalism. I may assure you that in one 
way it is as clear of any such thing as if it had been written by 
yourself, or Hall, or Cunningham, or my good old friend Zach. 
Macauley. It is, I suppose, a sine qua non of radicalism (how 
eagerly, for change, this foolish term has been seized upon- - 
Jacobinism being quite worn out in thirty years’ service), an 
essential, is it not ? that there should be a systematic lauding and 
extolling of the people, a trumpeting of their virtues, wisdom, 
rights, &c., &c. ; whereas, from beginning to end, 1 exhibit the 
People as odiously and loathsomely vile, and degraded, and de¬ 
praved ; insomuch, that, while intending it, and knowing it for 
mere truth, I have yet been sometimes apprehensive of incurring 
the imputation of having some special spite* at the people, some 
actual revenge, to be wreaked on them in a book, for want of such 
means of infliction as the Manchester parsons employed, and the 
Clapham and Battersea parsons approve their having employed— 
as how should they do otherwise than approve, for Yansittart is of 
tlie Bible Society, and I think even Castlereagh has speechified 
for it, and they approved that mode of disciplining the people. 

“ I exhibit the people as debased, vicious, and abominable; but 
why have they been suffered to be so, in this liideous degree ? 
Where has been the grand cause and the wickedness of their be¬ 
ing allowed to continue in vile and wretched barbarism from gene¬ 
ration to generation ? It may be of the nature of radicalism (for 
it is not yet settled how much that vice comprehends), that in this 
reference, recurring several times at intervals, I have uttered 
divers sentences of indignant invective. And how, I wonder, was 
this to be avoided ? In a brief review of the state of the people, 


6 


LIFE OF JOHiN FOSTEli. 


in this powerful, enlighlened, Froleslanl country, the mass of the 
people are seen, in frightful sameness, from one age to another, 
sunk in the most barbarous ignorance, with its appropriate de¬ 
pravities. Now, was this to be represented as a bare fact, as if it 
had been a series of unfavorable seasons, as a thing for which, 
there was nowhere any accountableness, a thing which there were 
no means and no duly of causing to be otherwise ? Was the 
reader to be left to lament, in his simplicity, that there had not, 
during so many ages, been a strong government in the land, that 
there had not been a religious establishment, great seminaries of 
learning, great revenues applicable to the national welfare, a great 
power of influence of tlie upper classes (not solely the govern¬ 
ment) over the lower 1 No, simple reader, you are to know that 
there tvere all these fine things, that these things have been to this 
hour ; but that they have been so much better occupied than about 
the improvement of the people, that said people have been suffered 
to continue amoral nuisance on the face of the earth; and yet, all 
the while, there has been a furious rant about the glory of Eng¬ 
land. It obstinately tvill appear to me, that it were infinitely silly 
for a writer, who is taking a view of the melancholy and horrid 
fact of the past and present intellectual and moral state of the 
people, to fancy himself required, by some kind of delicacy or 
homage to tiie pride and self-complacency of church-folk, and 
perhaps great folk, to keep out of sight (even if it were possible) 
so large and essential a part of his subject, as the grand cause 
why the dreadf ul slate of things which he exhibits has been what it 
has. If he were just only making, to a mixed assembly of per¬ 
sons, an appeal for local charity, it would be quite a different 
aflair; he would then have to consult the 'policy of the mo¬ 
ment. But this winter’s job of mine has been a quite different 
sort of thing ; an attempt to display, in a brief, but somewhat com¬ 
prehensive manner, in the spirit of a moral censor, combined with 
something of the office of a historian, a mighty evil, in its existence 
as a fact, and in its relations of cause and consequence. Now, un¬ 
less we are forbidden to take such a subject, sucli a grand matter 
of fact, that is to say, at last, are forbidden to take any subject 
otherwise than as clipped down to the part of it which you may 
exhibit and displease nobody,—unless it is wrong to take such a 
subject on this large ground, it is plainly impossible for you to- 
withhold the most emphatically condemnatory references to that 
in the nation, which might and should have prevented its being in 


ESSAY ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 


7 


SO horrid a condition ;—to that economy of government and church 
of which it w.as the sole and express business to see to the nation’s 
welfare and improvement, together with that great power of influ¬ 
ence, by which the higher ranks (considered not in an official capa¬ 
city) might have mightily promoted that improvement. 

“ ‘ Generalize yourself,’ say you? Why, my good friend, the 
very mirror and perfection as you are, of what theClapham high- 
church-and-state junto would wish a dissenter and reformist to. be, 
you would have tight work to generalize on the brutal ignorance 
and barbarism of a parish, for a hundred years running, without a 
single glance at the ecclesiastical institution established in that 
parish, and richly fed with its tithes, for the very purpose of 
taking care of the souls of the people. For myself, I have no such 
petty concern as to be on good terms with that or any other 
junto; my business I took to be, to state the fact and the truth, 
comprehensively and strongly, w'homever it might displease or 
please. , 

“Yet as to-this pleasing and displeasing, you really seem, 
from so much intercourse and favor with a particular class—the 
evangelical church-people, the grossest sycophants of power, and 
defenders of the wdiole vast system of corruption—to have come 
to identify them with everything of which the opinion is worth 
regarding in the land. But do you, indeed, make nothing of all 
that mental excitement, that augmenting strea.m of opinion and 
detestation, and that gradual course of events, which are driving 
with destructive direction, against that state of things which these 
devotees to everything established are so fervently worshipping ? 
Do you really, as I suppose they do, think that after a while all 
this will be quelled and sink into the earth or go off in vapor 
into the air ; to leave, in tranquil permanence, just the order of 
things which Wilberforce, Vansittart, .... and the like, make 
it a good part of their religion to defend ? I ask this simply in 
reference to the point of policy, in a writer’s making no scruple 
of showing himself the enemy of that system, when he is on 
topics which cannot be treated comprehensively without some kind 
of reference to the manner in which the presiding power and 
institutions of the country have affected the matters in question. 

“ You remonstrate against ‘ confining and revolting peculiarities.^ 
Peculiarities ? that should imply something in \^hich a-man has 
very few to partake or coincide with him. Think of this ! as 
applied to my opinion, relatively, for instance, to the effect which 


8 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the Established Church has had on the knowledge and religion 
of the mass of the English people for several ages back ! or, 
to my estimate and remarks, as to what one-tenth part of 
the several thousands of millions sterling which the state has 
expended in war, during the past century, would have done, if 
applied to the direct improvement of the people ! Revolting pe¬ 
culiarities ! What company can you have been keeping ?” 

In the autumn of 1819, Foster spent several weeks in an excur¬ 
sion to the most remarkable points of the Devonshire and Corn¬ 
wall coast. In a letter written to Mr. Hughes, on his way home 
(dated Ilfracombe, Sept. 21, 1819), he says, A very loud inter¬ 
nal admonition urges my return to the dreaded business of men¬ 
tal and literary task-work. 1 shall be very glad, however, to 
liave made this long excursion, through scenes which I had very 
often greatly wished to see, and with no immediate hope ; much 
less could I have any anticipation, that a person whom I had 
never seen nor heard of, a few months previously, should make 
me the liberal offer of taking a circuit of five or six hundred 
miles, entirely at his expense. The offer was made in so per¬ 
fectly easy and unostentatious a manner, and the course of the 
tour was so perfectly the thing that I had long wished, that I had 
not a moment’s hesitation, provided my good wife’s health would 
allow my going so far and long from home. The luxury has been 
very great, of beholding so many scenes of land and sea, and rocks, 
castles, and other antiquities, under the advantage of constantly 
favorable weather, good health, and providential protection against 
all disastrous and even incommodious incidents. If I live to do 
something more in the way of attempting to instruct the public, 
I have no doubt this series of beautiful and magnificent visions 
will contribute now and then something in the way of useful 
ornament or illustration.” 

The Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance was published 
m 1820, and in the autumn, Mr. Foster began to revise it for a 
second edition, a task which occupied him for several months. 
“ You will envy the felicities of quill driving,” he says, in a let¬ 
ter to Mr. Stokes (March 15, 1821), “ when 1 confess to you, that 
ever since before I wrote to you, perhaps about the end of Octo¬ 
ber, I have literally been at the very job which I then mentioned 
I had begun, and which is at this very hour several weeks short 
of its termination. I have actually been at it without intermis¬ 
sion, or leisure to I’ead a newspaper, review or anything else 


LECTURES. 


9 


And 1 am quite certain I never underwent the same quantity of 
hard labor within the same number of weeks together in my 
whole life. On entering thoroughly into the job, with a deter- 
ruination to work it so that I should never have any more trouble 
about it, I found it such a business as I had little reckoned upon. 
My principle of proceeding was to treat no page, sentence, or 
word, with the smallest ceremony ; but to hack, split, twist, 
prune, pull up by the roots, or practise any other severity on 
whatever I did not like. The consequence has been alterations 
to the amount very likely of several thousands. There is no 
essential change, however, on a large scale ; the series of thoughts 
is the same, but with innumerable modifications of adjustment 
and expression ; and with so many small and, here and there, 
considerable enlargements, that the Essay on Popular Ignorance 
has distended itself under the process, and notwithstanding many 
condensations, from three hundred to four hundred pages. The 
printing of this is nearly completed ; the introductory part of the 
Missionary Discourse has undergone a similar handling ; but the 
printer having lately, at my remonstrance, very much accelerated 
his part of the business, I shall be obliged to pass, with very 
slight operations, over more than the latter half of the said dis¬ 
course. 1 must let it take its fortune, on the strength of the rigo¬ 
rous discipline given to all the preceding portion of the volume. 
It is a sweet luxury, this book-making ; for I dare say I could 
point out scores of sentences each one of whicfli has cost me seve¬ 
ral hours of the utmost exertion of my mind to put it in the state 
in which it now stands, after putting it in several other forms, to 
each one of which I saw some precise objection, which I could, 
at the time, have very distinctly assigned. And in truth, there 
are hundreds of them to which I could make objections as they 
now stand, but I did not know how to hammer them into a better 
form.” 

At Michaelmas, 1821, Foster removed from Downend to Sta¬ 
pleton, within three miles of Bristol. To a residence in the city 
itself he had a most decided dislike, partly on the score of health, 
and partly from dread of idle morning visitors. 

In the following year (1822), he complied with the solicitations 
of his friends in Bristol, to deliver a lecture once a fortnight at 
Broadmead Chapel. It was so arranged as to interfere as little 
as possible with the services in other places of worship, by which 
means an audience was formed, which, though not numerous, 



10 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


contained probably a greater proportion of intelligent and educated 
persons than most single congregations could have furnished. 
The preacher was aware, that he was addressing friends, or per¬ 
sons who, from their knowledge of him as an author, felt no ordi¬ 
nary interest in listening to his instructions. He acceded to un¬ 
dertake this service perhaps with greater readiness from having 
previously fbrined the intention of publishing a volume of Dis¬ 
courses. “ If I can bring myself,” he says to Mr. Hughes (April 
27, 1821), “ some time hence to the business of writing once more, 
I think the next attempt must be, a volume of Discourses, or Ser¬ 
mons turned Essays, in default of my having done anything of 
consequence for so long a time in the pulpit.” To another friend 
he says,* “ At the beginning of the year I was requested by a 
.sort of association of friends in the city to undertake a lecture 
(that is to say, a sermon) once a fortnight to a congregation quite 
miscellaneous, and in the most perfect sense of the word, volun¬ 
tary. This was much the kind of thing that 1 could have wished, 
under my physical incompetence to the usual frequency of 
what is called stated service—together with my indisposition and 
consciously deficient adaptedness to it. As to the studious part 
of the concern, however, this one discourse a fortnight cost me as 
much labor perhaps as it is usual to bestow on the five or six ser¬ 
mons exacted in the fortnight of a preacher’s life. If I shall have 
competent health for the required labor of composition, I may 
probably try to put a selection of these discourses into the shape of 
a printed volume or more, in the course of time.” A few months 
later, he repeats his intention of publishing, but adds, “ It will be 
most slow and oppressive toil.”-!* 

At the end of two years, Mr. Foster found that his state of 
health would only allow of his delivering a monthly lecture. “ I 
had fully made up my mind,” he informs Mr. Hill, “ to an en¬ 
tire discontinuance of that service. But after having signified so, 
I had one evening a ‘ deputed ’ party of the Bristol friends here, 
to persuade me to the contrary ; to persuade, as the first object, 
a continuance as before, once a fortnight; and failing of that, in 
the next place, to continue the service at least once a month ; to 
which latter appointment I was not able to refuse acceding. And 
therefore, for this year, so it is to be. You ask whether ‘ the 
end was better than the beginning.’ If simply the last discourse 
be the point of the question, I think I may answer in the affirma- 

* July 3, 1822. f To Mr. Hill, Nov., 1822. 


Doddridge’s rise and progress. 


11 


live. I had a splendid subject—the three Methodists of Babylon 
in the ‘fiery furnace;’ and perhaps I thought, and perhaps 
some of the auditors thought, tljat I did it tolerable justice. This 
was no appropriate Chistmas subject; but I began by briefly 
‘ showing cause ’ why no special regard was due to the day.”* 
On Mr. Hall’s settling in Bristol he at once relinquished this en¬ 
gagement. “ I have made an end of lecturing,” he tells Mr. 
Stokes ; “ it had been, from the first movement of the question 
of Hall’s coming, my determination to do so, in that event; such 
a service appearing to me altogether superfluous, and even bor¬ 
dering on impertinent. 1 shall now have very little preaching 
ever, probably, any more ; and shall apply myself, as well as I 
can, to the mode of intellectual operation, of which the results 
may extend much further and last much longer.’’j- 

Mr. Foster’s pen, however, even before the termination of the 
Lectures, had not been wholly unemployed for the public. Not 
to mention his contributions to the Eclectic Review, it was during 
this period that he wrote a theological essay which, in point of 
direct religious utility, has been surpassed by none of his writings 
—his Introduction to Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion. 
“ Between two and tliree years since, at least,” he informs Mr. 
Sheppard,:}; “ I promised Mr. Collins, of Glasgow, to write a piece 
or two for his reprints of some of the valuable older religious 
books, of which he has already republished a considerable num¬ 
ber, with, in each instance, a prefixed essay by one or other of* 
our contemporary manufacturers of composition. Not without 
some reluctance on my part, he fixed Doddridge’s Rise and Pro¬ 
gress on me. I was soon to write the introductory essay (or 
whatever such a nondescript kind of thing ought to be called), and 
he would soon print the book. He did his part with a despatch 
not at all pleasing to me, and actually the whole large edition 
has been lying as dead stock in the warehouse for two years, in 
default of my task being performed. Again and again he has 
written, and I have been too much ashamed even to answer his 
letters, though expressed in the most mild and friendly spirit. 
Bad health, to which I find that mental labor is just poison (to 
use a Scotch adverb), has been in alliance with my horror of 
composition—and so the procrastination has gone on, one six 

* To Mr. Hill, January 20, 1824. f To Mr. Stokes, Jan. 3, 1826. 

f To Mr. Sheppard, May 10, 1825. 


12 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


months after another, while I have felt ashamed, and mortified, 
and self-reproached, at being thus the cause of a very serious loss, 
in the plain trade sense, to Chalmers and Collins. At last, how¬ 
ever, these feelings, together with the excellent man’s expostula¬ 
tions and remonstrances, have had the effect of driving me to try 
an attempt at the unwelcome service, and I have been for a 
number of weeks at the task, and a most melancholy one it has 
been, both for slow, hard toil, and the little value of the result.” 
To Mr. Hill, he says (July 1), “ In my last I befooled myself 
once again in my reckoning about the termination of the task¬ 
work. That great event is still several weeks off, three at least; 
probably more. There have, to be sure, been sundry days of 
interrupted or remitted industry ; but mainly, I have been at it. 
I find far more revision and correction necessary in transcribing 
for the press than I had expected, notwithstanding the warning 
of all former experience. Several parts thus far I have had to 
write anew and differently ; minor corrections to an endless 
amount. The thing will be longer than I had thought or in¬ 
tended ; it will be as much, probably, as 120 pages. My master 
from Glasgow was here a few days since, and seemed to be con¬ 
tent to put the cudgel in the corner, on finding that the thing was 
honajide almost done. To think how much ado, of talking, fret¬ 
ting, pacing the room morning and night, pleading excuse from 
preaching and visiting, setting aside of plans for South Wales, 
&;c., &c.,—and all for what ?—a preface to Doddridge’s Rise 
and Progress! And a preface bearing no reference to the book 
—a preface having absolutely no assignable object or topic ! 
Indeed, this last circumstance of having no object, has been one 
of the grand grievances. If one has a topic, there is some defi¬ 
nite thing to aim at. But when it is just saying, ‘ You, all of 
you, ought to he religious P you are on a ground where you have 
no pathway, no direction, no one thing to drive at; one thing 
might just as well be said as another ; it is matter of chance what 
you shall think to say ; and often you are, that is, 1 am, in a 
perfect vacancy, and have nothing to say. Save me ever hence 
forward from the ground of flat, interminable common-place !” 
In the following October, he informs the same friend, “ That fag 
which I had confidently reckoned on getting through by April, 
by May, by June, and lastly, time enough, at all events, to revisit 
you in Pembrokeshire, held me till about six weeks ago, when I 
sent the last few pages to bring the thing through the press. It 


HIS son’s illness and death. 


13 


stretched,'and thinned, and languished out to the length of about 

160 printed pages.I have a very moderate estimate of 

the performance, except in point of correctness and condensation. 
It was almost all labored at under a miserable feeling of contrac¬ 
tion and sterility. Still I venture to think there are parts of it 
for which it must be the fault of the readers if they be not the 
better. I do not know whether I shall be induced to do, on a 
much more confined scale of extent, another thing or two for the 
same employers. But, indeed, I shall have to see whether they 
will ask me.” .... 

In all the relations of domestic life, Mr. Foster found ample 
cause for satisfaction and gratitude ; but during his residence at 
Downend, the uncertain tenure of the purest of earthly enjoyments 
was painfully indicated by the state of Mrs. Foster’s health, which 
often excited considerable apprehension. His own frame, also, as 
the preceding extracts show, had suffered not slightly from long- 
continued^and severe mental application. It was, however, not till 
a few years after their removal to Stapleton, that the family circle 
was broken by the removal of their only son. His education was 
carried on at home (a short period excepted), till he was placed 
under Mr. Bullar’s care, at Southampton. Here he continued 
till the spring of 1825, when symptoms of incipient disease, ac¬ 
companying a too rapid growth, occasioned his return to the parental 
roof. It is the testimony of his, highly respected instructor, that 
he was “ a boy of good parts, and of a strong and clear under¬ 
standing, but a most remarkably reserved disposition. Of the 
discourses which he heard, and of the other religious instruction 
that he habitually received, he always gave so clear and well- 
arranged an account as to prove that he both attended to and un¬ 
derstood them.”* In a few months he appeared so far recovered 
that his parents ventured to place him in the Protestant Dissenters’ 
Grammar School at Mill Hill. “ I hope John and you,” Ins hither 
writes to the editor, “ will be under the same roof about tw'enty 
hours after the time that I am writing this note. I cannot at all 
pretend to say whereabouts in the classes he will be properly en¬ 
tered. A few questions of the tutors to himself as to what he has 
done, will soon determine the matter. I am sorry that he will not 
commence on higher ground. From the want of any school 
during many of his earlier years, and from partly my indolence 

* Lay Lectures on Christian Faith and Practice, by John Bullar, 
Southampton, 1844, p. 493. 


14 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


and partly my occupations, lie did not begin the course of any¬ 
thing to be called learning till long after the proper time of his 
boyhood. And indolence has been, as to himself, rather too pal¬ 
pable a quality he has inherited from me. Any unadroitness 
which he may betray at first, will be fairly in part attributable to 
his having been really and physically disabled for application for 
the greatest part of the last thVee months. I had intended to have 
kept him in hard exercise during the interval betvveen his leaving 
Southampton and going to Mill Hill; but the illness that brought 
him prematurely home, and the subsequent long debility from 
which he is but barely now i-ecovered, would have made that im¬ 
possible, even if it had not been judged beneficial for him to go 
on the long visit to Bourton, and if I had not been all this while 
miserably occupied about—you know what.”* 

After having been at Mill Hill only a few weeks, he relapsed 
into debility, accompanied by cough an'd the rupture of a blood¬ 
vessel. A visit to Lyme appeared to be of some service, and he 
regained somewhat of his strength before the approach of winter, 
but was still incapable of any considerable exertion. Though 
by taking every precaution the progress of disease was in a 
measure retarded, the symptoms reappeared more decidedly in the 
ensuing spring and summer. “ You kindly inquire after our John,” 
Mr. Foster writes to Mr. Hill, “ whom the Sovereign hand has 
stricken. He returned hither, by a tedious and painful journey, 
after a sojourn of ten weeks on the coast, reduced to much greater 
weakness than when he went. It will be a satisfaction to have 
made the experiment, but it has been of no avail. He is unable 
to walk'up stairs to bed, and is as thin and pallid as almost it 
seems possible for a living person to be. The plain and mournful 
truth is, that there is not the slightest probability of anything 
now to follow but a gradual decline, or a sudden fall into the 
bed ofodust. 

“ How melancholy it is to behold him thus evidently sinking 
under the fatal pressure! And I am anxiously concerned that 
his dear mother, in her feebleness of body, with a spirit habit¬ 
ually tending to droop, and so long oppressed, and almost exhaust¬ 
ed by care, and vigilance, and hopelessness for him, should not 
also be reduced to such debility as would become serious illness. 

“ In this extinction of all hope of his life, our chief solicitude 
is respecting his higher and future interests. His situation has 

* To the Editor, July 25, 1825. 


HIS son’s illness and death. 


15 


not been declared to him in the most plain and absolute terms, but 
strongly intimated ; and I believe his own internal presages are 
to the same effect. But I feel it my painful duty to lay aside, 
without further delay, all equivocal language,—not, however, 

expecting he will feel any surprise.He has been a good 

boy, remarkably free from all but tlie very minor faults of moral 
character ; of sober disposition, perfectly obedient, and, I believe, 
of good intention. That such a mind should feel any violent 
sense of guilt, or overwhelming terrors of divine justice, it would 
be out of all consistency to expect or require. But I am anxious 
tliat he should feel an impressive general conviction of a depraved 
and unworthy nature, and the neccvssity of pardon and reconcilia¬ 
tion tlirough Jesus Christ; that he should especially be sensible 
of tlie evil and guilt of a deficient love and devotion to God, and 
of the indisposition to apply the thoughts, desires, and earnest 
efforts to the grand business of life. This order of conviction and 
solicitude I wish and pray that he may feel, and then, after a life 
so nearly blameless, in a jjractical view, I should be greatly con¬ 
soled and assured. My apprehensions of the extent of divine 
mercy, and of the terms of hope and safety for poor mortals, are 
widely remote from the austerity of the systematic divines.” 
Within little more than a month from the date of this letter, the 
event anticipated took place, thougli not till the hearts of his pa¬ 
rents had been relieved from their deepest anxiety, and delight¬ 
fully consoled by receiving from their son the calm, unreserved 
expressions of Christian faitli and hope. Five days after his de¬ 
cease, his father wrote, “ John has left us now (all but his wan, 
insensible form), no more to return.The last complete sen¬ 

tence he uttered was, ‘ I know that my Redeemer liveth.’ This 
was near the close; he retained his faculties till within the very 
last hour; then, about midnight, seemed to sleep; and expired, I 

believe, without the sense of suffering.My interest in the 

accumulation of valuable books in this room will be sensibly les¬ 
sened by the extinction of the anticipation of their being hereafter 
a source of instruction and gratification to him. He needs now 
no such means of knowledge. And how many things by this 
time he knows, which no books can tell! Late in his illness he 
mentioned it as one*pleasing circumstance in the idea of the su¬ 
perior world, that knowledge will beam into the soul without the 
slow labor of difficult acquisition.”* 


To the Editor, Oct. 10, 1826. 





16 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


LETTERS. 

CVIII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Downend, JVov. 19, 1818. 

My dear Friend,— .... I really did “ dare^’’ to anticipate success 
in my application for Howe’s Works. But since you seem on that sub¬ 
ject as impracticable as Captain Ross has just found the barrier to the 
entrance so confidently expected into the Polar Sea, I have now- to renew 
the application ; for I cannot surrender the object altogether. 

.... It is considerably an object to me to have the works of that 
man; but it is also a condition of their being of any material use to me, 
to have them in the older form, for the plain good reason that the new 
edition is printed in a type too small for the weakness of my eyes; I 
could not read such a book an hour without their warning me to shut it 
up. But really I have no certainty that you will not take this for m.ere 
‘pretence. You have quite a habit, I have observed, of putting such a 
construction, when any previously formed opinion requires to be main¬ 
tained by that interpretation. You never really believed, at least to the 
extent of the most moderate terms in which I described it, my alleged 
physical difficulty and inconvenience in public speaking,—an inconveni¬ 
ence of which all the imputations of pretence and caprice are by far the 
least of the grievances. The same imputation of pretence you made, I 
recollect, on my alleged reason for declining, some time last year I think, 
to go to Horsley to meet Dr. Chalmers, when my foot was swelled, and 
under medical treatment for a recent accident so injurious that I feel the 
bad effects of it at this very hour, after an hour’s walk, and fear that I 
shall feel them as long as I live.* But enough of this. The present 
object is to obtain a copy of Howe’s Works which I can read with some 
degree of convenience; and that cannot be the new edition. At the 
same time I must acknowledge that there is with me another point of 
preference in the old edition: namely, that in the new one, I recollect the 
Editor engaged, as a favor to the readers, to make (and I suppose he did 
make) some little tinkerings of the long, involved, and grotesquely-con¬ 
structed sentences; a thing sufficiently wanted I allow, for it is quite 
wonderful that such a man as Howe should have bungled so sadly in 
the matter of sentence-making. But, nevertheless, I should prefer having 

* “ Chalmers was, the last two Sundays and the intermediate week, at or 
near Horsley, where he has a sister. He preached.on both these Sundays 
for Winterbotham, who came hither with a gig to take me to Horsley in 
the intermediate week; but in the state my foot was then in, I felt it quite 
out of the question to go to a distance from remedies and the doctor. If the 
lower end had permitted, the upper might assuredly have gained very con¬ 
siderable advantage from the society of that strong-minded Scotchman.”— 
Mr. Foster to B. Stokes, Esq., Bourton, May, 1817, 


LETTERS. 


17 


his paragraphs just as he had made them, to any Editor’s .rectification 
of them,—a preference, however, which cannot be supposed to be felt by 
any gentleman of the literary firm of Burder and Hughes, the Editors 
and correctors of Henry's Exposition. 

.... I do not know whether it may at all avail me to set up any 
defence in answer to your impeachment for lavish and inexcusable ex¬ 
pense in matter of graphical art; which impeachment would have been 
in much stronger terms if you had seen all the acquisitions of that kind, 
with an inventory of prices. My defence would very honestly begin 
with an acknowledgment of the justice of the accusation to some certain 
extent, and an avowal of most sincere intentions of reformation. Old 
Conscience has often been saying something on the matter. But it does 
not by any means identify itself in its terms of reprehension with the 
external accuser, as to the degree of the criminality. For one thing, 
supposing the indulgence in question were considered as a mere personal 
gratification, I have to say that during the period of this luxurious indul¬ 
gence (the last eight or nine yearsj I have been in all other personal 
expenses far below any other man I know, who might be in tolerable 
pecuniary condition. I have .... cared nothing for furniture, or any 
of the paraphernalia of what is called genteel life; and especially have 
spent nothing, with about one solitary exception, in the great luxury of 
travelling, while all around me have been making excursions of pleasure, 
and of pleasure grafted on business, in this direction, and in that—to 
London, or Paris, or the Lakes, or twenty other ways. Directly as sub¬ 
stitutes (and substitutes not to be consumed in the using) for such indul¬ 
gences, some of my gi'aphical purchases have been made, consisting, as 
they mainly do, of scenery and antiquities. “ I cannot,” I have said, 
“ make the Tour of the Coast, but I may have Daniell’s, and Turner and 
Cooke’s most beautiful views of the aspects of those maritime objects and 
scenes; which views, besides, may be beheld by fifty other 'persons in 
succession, and will retain their full value even after a thousand people 
may have seen them.” And so of other fine representative works. But 
many of the fine works in this den, such as Humboldt’s South America, 
Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (which you saw), Choiseul’s Greece, &c., 
&,c., &c., are representative of scenes altogether beyond the reach of 
actual inspection, but scenes of high interest, and about which all culti¬ 
vated men are talking. If those scenes are among the most striking and 
interesting on earth, worth remote and hazardous journeys (for those who 
can aftbrd it) to see, it is a thing of n6 small value for a man to have at 
command, for fixing their images in his own mind, and the minus of all 
cultivated persons around him, fine, and confessedly faithful delineations 
of them. Why, what sort of deposition would it be as to the quality, for 
instance, of your George’s opening mind, if he will not for me be the 
better, in point of clear conception of volcanoes and their accessories, for 
having seen Hamilton’s admirable views of such objects ? 1 know that 

to me such a thing happening in my boyhood would have been of value 

VOL. II. 3 


18 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


to this hour. I repeat that such auxiliaries give the means of forming 
clear ideas of many things of which no descriptions can give clear ideas. 
I repeat, too, the assertion of the great value of such imagery, thrown 
into the imagination of a man of any genius, for the purposes of such 
illustration, as it is of great advantage for a preacher, or any other in¬ 
structor, to be able spontaneously to mingle in his discourse. 

Again, you speak of this expense, just as if it were the absolute aliena¬ 
tion and consumption oi so much property; whereas it is obviously only 
the loss of the interest; and that loss to be set against all the good which 
1 am alleging. Now, if I had been in the habit, during a number of 
years past, of expending, in the absolute sense, just so much’as ihis inter¬ 
est, in journeys to see remarkable things, with a trifling addition of the 
ordinary matters of polished life, &:c., &lc., I do believe that nobody would 
ever have thought of calling it extravagance. 

.... I am tempted to say (rather ac?/lommem), that you have always 
appeared to me much less sensible than is almost claimed in each case 
of a highly cultivated mind, to the aspects of beauty and magniflcence in 
real A'aZure, which such works are meant to represent; and just so much 
of the defect have you suffered in the qualifications of an orator. 

This is son^evvhat more than enough to have said on the subject; nor 
is all this meant as a retractation of my commencing admission of excess 
in this indulgence of taste; nor of denial that I have many a time been 
indignant at the thought of the heavy bill from Paternoster-row, when 
occasions have occurred on which I should have been glad to have' been 
able to contribute to some valuable purpose and deserving object four 
half guineas instead of one. 

Methinks it should not be one of the worst indications as to the eflect 
of these luxuries, that I am thus trying with all my might to get posses¬ 
sion of an easily readable copy of the works of John Howe. But, indeed, 
that very John Puritan Howe (shame on him for railing for ever at this 
so picturesque a planet) was exceedingly delighted with the scenery and 
antiquities of Italy, whither he travelled when near my age ; and, had his 
fortune been to live now, he would most certainly, if debarred that actual 
contemplation, have purchased a copy of Campi Phlegraei, and of Hake- 
well’s exquisite Picturesque Tour of Italy, now publishing. 

I end as I began, with Howe’s Works; pray send word by the first 
opportunity to Thornbury to have the book packed and sent as aforesaid. 
It will be mere perversity to leave it there till any such remote time as 
you talk of—“ next summer.” By being soon here, it may before that 
time have done ever so much good service to me, and by me to other 
people. 


CIX. TO JOHN SHEPPARD, ESQ. 

[Relating to a IManuscript on War, 1819.J 

Being willing to assure myself, that by this time the anxiety of 
domestic interest is so much remitted as to allow your partial return to 




LETTERS. 


19 


literary concerns, I am vexed to have so long detained your MS., 
especially as it was not from any critical propensity, but merely for the 
purpose of a re-inspection, that 1 had expressed a wisli to see it again. 
Nor do I feel any prompting to indulge in annotation. I do not see what, 
upon your system, you can materially mend or alter. I still question (as 
yen will readily suppose without my saying it), whether the system does 
not approximate too near quakerism to be quite feasible, even if a few of 
the bodies jK)litic of this wicked planet were better disposed than any of 
them is. But any rate, the essay furnishes a great deal of new sugges¬ 
tion, argument, and illustrative detail, on a most important subject, 
which wants to bo forced into discussion by all manner of means, and 
which cannot be senousZy discussed without some advantage, especially in 
this season of half-repentant collapse and nausea, after the fury and 
intoxication of war. 

To such a public discussion, I think your performance will be a 

valuable contribution.It is of little comparative consequence, 

that the reader does not coincide in a number of the subordinate points, 
—that he is dissentient in matters of mode and degree ,—if he is drawn 
into accordance in the main substance of the principles,—if he is made 
to feel, that this whole business of war and glory must be transferred 
from the jurisdiction of the statesman’s creed and morality to that of the 
Christian,—and finds, that after it is so transferred, there is an assignable 
form of theory and duty marked out to him, much short of quakerism, 
which he is invincibly compelled to regard as absurd. 

The Peace Society has quite paralysed itself, for any extensive utility, 
by the adoption of the idle non-resistance notion. It may be presumed 
that many minds, abhorring the war-madness, but yet totally unable to 
accord with the Quakers, as deeming their notions a dereliction of 
common sense, will be gratified to find between the extremes, something 
which they can substantially approve, however much they may consider 
some of the detail as matter for re-discussion. I think the work cannot 
fail to do some good ; at the same time you are most perfectly aware, 
how unstatesmanlike, how unheroic, how unpoetic, and all that, its doc¬ 
trines, and scruples, and limitations, will look, to such readers as the 
present age has peculiarly tended to form, and the nominal Christianity 
of the nation has very little served to correct. 


CX. TO JOHN SHEPPARD, ESQ. 

[On the decease of Mrs. S.] 

January 21, 1S20. 

My dear Sir,— When I last left your house, after a visit exceedingly 
interesting to me, I ventured to hope that I should yet again see your 
amiable associate, and under happier circumstances of amended health 
to her, and alleviated anxiety to you. In such a judgment as could be 




LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ao 

formed, on so brief and transient an acquaintance, she appeared to me 
well adapted to engage and return the tenderest affection ; and I should 
liave congratulated )mur union, if I could have learnt that the anticipa¬ 
tions of those best qualified to judge, were in favor of a full restoration 
of her health. This pleasure was denied me, but yet I did not feel in 
her company the omens, that this my first interview with her was to be 
the last. It would have been melancholy to have received her extremely 
kind attentions with such a presentiment. I subsequently heard of 
alternations which must have caused you a most painful, habitual appre¬ 
hensiveness ; but the latest accounts, before I went on a long excursion 
to the south, seemed to authorize a pleasing hope ; so that I heard, at 
length, the intelligence of the fatal event with a degree of surprise ; and 
it is even still difficult for me to realize the truth, that the person, wliose 
only image, in my mind, bears the bloom of youth and the living expres¬ 
sion of intelligence and kindness, is now laid cold and silent in the dust 

But, indeed, it is not she that is laid there ; and if, in your indulgence 
of pensive thought, you follow her thither, but so often in proportion to 
the frequency of the ascent to folloAV her to another region, as that dead 
form is less the essential being of your departed friend than her happy 
spirit is,—what a grand predominance you will have of the bright over 
the gloomy contemplations ! It is true, that affection cannot consent to 
any disparagement of even the dead form of the beloved object ; it will 
hover tenderly over its bed in the dust ! well, but let faith be there too ; 
and then even there also the contemplation becomes bright, on hearing 
Him that has the keys of death say, “ I will raise it up at the last day.” 

It is delightful that you can dwell with decided assurance on the piety 
of your departed associate. You can thus regard her as having passed 
beyond the very last of the pains and sorrows appointed to her existence 
by* her Creator, as looking back on them all, and having entered on an 
eternity of unmingled joy ; as having completed a short education for a 
higher sphere and a nobler society ; as having attained since she was 
your companion, and by the act of ceasing to be so, that in comparison 
with which the whole sublunary world is a trifle ; as having left your 
abode because her presence was required among the blessed and exalted 
servants of the supreme Lord in heaven. 


CXI. TO JOHN EASTHOPE, ESQ. 

, Downend, April 27, 1820. 

My dear Sir, —I cannot express to you with how much mortification 
it is this time my ill fortune to write to you. 

At this tedious, heavy job, which has occupied me so long, I have been 
doing my best for a number of weeks past, with a confidence entertained, 
till within the last seven or eight days, that I could force it to a con¬ 
clusion by the end of this month. But within this last number of days 



LETTERS. 


21 


(within about the time since I wrote to Mr. Stokes), I have found it 
perfectly impossible, with every other stimulus to impel me, and the 
strong additional one of anticipating to meet him at your house, abso¬ 
lutely impossible to make anything like such progress, or half such 
progress, as 1 had promised myself. That assurance to myself was 
made, not on a reckoning of more diligence (for I was already keeping 
hard at it), but in the expectation that I should find less to alter in the 
last portion of the job. But since that time I have found the obstructions 
seem to grow still more obstinate than before , it has been literally 
marching by the means of cutting my way" through an entangled 
thicket. I have been confounded to find how much absolutely must be 
altered in almost every page; partly to make the general drift direct and 
obvious, partly in making the sentences individually clear and intelligi¬ 
ble, partly in making the relation and junctures of the thoughts more 
correct and strict, partly in compressing the language, and 1 might say, 
partly many things more. All these matters of process I have found on 
my hands at once, in paragraph after paragraph, with only here and 
there, very rarely, a bit of clear ground of the extent of two or three 
sentences. I hav6 fretted and wondered, but this was of no use ; there 
was nothing for it but to loork. It would not do to say. It shall even go 
as it is. I knew the captiousness of readers, and the spite of critics too 
well for that. And for the thing itself, independently of those considera¬ 
tions, it was desirable not to let anything go defective and wrong, if it 
were possible to set it right ; which I never despair of being able to 
effect in the long run, though at first I cannot at all see or guess how. 
I have also wished to do the thing as nearly as possible in a manner to 
need no alterations in case of another edition. It is very unfair to the 
purchasers of the first, not to make a diligent effort to secure the point. 
In that respect, though not intentionally at the time, I sinned very deeply 
in my first job of book-making ; and was self-admonished to be very 
careful to avoid the same transgression in any future instance. 

.... You are very kind in assuring me a quiet room for shop-work 
at Finchley ; but really it would be altogether out of the question to 
pretend to perform the inevitable task anywhere but on the shop-board 
in this garret, where I keep at it the whole substance of the day. It 
would be in contravention to the whole attractions of sociality and 
friendship, and the whole object of my visiting London, to spend much 
time there in such business. An hour or two of the morning would be 
all that could go to it, and that is precisely the part of the day in which 
I am always the least up to the working pitch. . . . 


CXIT. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Downend, 1821. 

My dear Friend,— a packet to the printer may convey a few lines 
mi addressed to the 'public ,—that monster of a reader to which the 



22 


LIFE .OF JOHN FOSTER. 


author is willing to attribute some hundred thousand eyes. But I have 
not time to say much, for I do not know that I have ever been much 
harder tasked. A great tardiness of the press has thus tar been a real 
advantage to me, or at least to the job in hand. With the first third 
part, or so, of the Essay now reprinting, I was never anything near 
satisfied, any more than, it seems, the readers are. It was begun (on 
the mere force of a determination to do something at any rate) in a 
dreary season of the year, which always has a malignant influence on 
my mental faculties ; and prosecuted a great way on under the notion 
of making it only a long discourse. For more than two months past I 
have been applying my whole strength, to make it what I can be content 
for it to remain, without any future alteration. And never was labor 
more truly in vain, if I have not very greatly improved this first third 
part: but indeed I know I have greatly mended it. As it now stands, it 
is more than half a re-composition; and, as all the alterations and addi¬ 
tions were to be adjusted constantly into the old train of the composition, 
the labor has probably been more than would have been required to 
write, independently, as much as the whole. Many of the ideas have 
been more clearly expressed, the sequence has been, in various instances, 
made more obvious, and here and there a sparkle has been struck, even 
from the cold opaque flint of winter, or the more cold and opaque sub¬ 
stance of the subject. The quantity added will probably make 120 
pages of the first edition run to as much as 150 or 160 of the new. 
But the language has been compressed, while the topics have been di¬ 
lated. The job, in short, has been so worked, that I shall now feel a 
most perfect, immovable assurance that any further complaints of ob¬ 
scurity, involvement, &G.y &c., will be but proofs of the reader’s want 
either of attention or capacity. I wish to believe that in the further 
progress I shall not find any great degree of correction necessary; and 
besides, the more popular and stimulant quality of the topics will more 
easily obtain an excuse for a less finished composition. Nor can time 
be allowed for much of this slow labor ; for I shall be very desirous not 
to delay the printing. 

Holdsworth sent me the British Revietv, in which, in the terms, “ ex¬ 
quisite precision of language,” I fancy I see a recognition (and the only 
one I ever have seen or heard) of that which I consider as the advanta¬ 
geous peculiarity of my diction; namely, if I may use such a phrase, 
its verity to the ideas,—its being composed of words and constructions 
merely and directly fitted to the thoughts, with a perfect disregard of 
any general model, and a rejection of all the set and artificial formalities 
of phraseology in use, even among good writers : I may add, a special 
truth and consistency in all language involving figure. If you are be¬ 
ginning to say, “ Let another praise thee, and not thyself,” I may ask 
whether it should not be an excepted case when that “ other ” has not 
sense to see anything in me to praise. Quite enough, however, of the 
subject. 


LETTERS.. 


23 




CXIII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Downendi dlpril 27, 1821. 

My dear Friend, —Mr. Holdsworth has detached and sent to me 
tlie half of a letter to him from you, relative to the poor “book,” which, 
it seems, after all the care and toil expended upon it, is still obnoxious 
to so many inculpations. 

.... The writer’s perfectly knowing his own meaning may some¬ 
times deceive him as to what will be the reader’s perception; as in the 
instance you have noted, p. 159, line 16, “ with then a Reflection,” &.c. 
I was not sensible that the meaning would not be obviously this,—with 
a reflection then made, or next made, on himself, as being that bad cha¬ 
racter himself;—a right judgment first made of the badness of such a 
disposition, and then, next, a reflection on himself as chargeable with 
that wicked disposition.* 

An habitual, an historical, I do invincibly nauseate and abhor. It in¬ 
fallibly produces the babyish pronunciation, an istorical, an ahitual. 
And it is the most palpable violation of consistency, since nothing could 
look and sound more foolish than an istory, an abit. I care not what 
authority there may he in the case; the thing is on the face of it absurd. 

“ A vast deal &c., is certainly a good deal colloquial. There 
are a number of things in the volume of the same class; and they were 
deliberately (and not inadvertently) admitted, from a detestation of a 
stately, formal, measured, high-level sort of style, like that of Robertson 
or Blair. Let any one observe how often this sort of phrases occurs in 
the prose w’orks of Dryden, whose style is perhaps the best in our Ian 
guage,—except in some points of mere grjijnmatical correctness, to 
which the times he WTote in had not quite attained. This very con¬ 
struction that I am here falling into—“ the times he wrote in,” is one 
of the kind of things which you would find him continually using. And 
nothing can be more tiresome and odious than the perpetual of which 
and in which, for the purpose of avoiding the occurrence of the preposi¬ 
tion at the end of a clause or sentence. Away with this stiff, pedantic 
formalitvAccordingly I have here and there ended a sentence, or 
> member of a sentence, with a preposition. In the very best talking such 
Idlings would be freely admitted, and the careful, systematic avoidance 
of them would appear a foolish affectation. While noting such matters, 
I must insist on your observing and acknowledging one point in which 

* “ The habitual indulgence of the irascible, vexatious, and malicious 
tempers, to the plague and terror of all within reach, scarcely ever be¬ 
comes a subject of judicial estimate, as a character hateful in the abstract, 
with then a reflection of that estimate on the man’s own sell.”—Essay on 
Popular Ignorance, third edit., 1834, p. 145 ; last edit, 1845, p. 112 (/or 
them read then). 

In the first edit, 1820, p. 123, the latter part of the sentence stood 
thus :—“ as a character viewed in the abstract, with then a reflection of 
that estimate on the man’s own self to whom the character belongs.” 


24 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


I excel my contemporaries. I give greater competence and power to 
the verb and participle; making them often express the sense com¬ 
pletely, where, according to the ordinary modes of writing, a botheration 
of two or tliree little additional words would have been brought in. 

You are quite right in some of your comma criticisms ; but I do not 
observe that in any of the instances the sense is perverted or obscured ; 
and unless that were the case, it would be doing mischief to note them 
in “ errata,” because this would, at the reader’s first glance, give a sort 
of insignificance to the said errata, and prevent his noticing particularly 
any thing that might be corrected there. 

As to punctuation, considered generally, let me assure you that there 
is not, and there cannot be, any decided and practically available canon. 
If you would attempt to follow strictly an intellectual rule, you would 
only make your page almost impossible to be read ; for that would re¬ 
quire you sometimes to divide one single line into several bits, and then 
not to admit one stop in four, five, or six lines together. After a very 
few rules obviously dictated by the sense, there is no further guide for 
you than to consider what pauses a person reading aloud will want, to help 
him conveniently through the sentence. As to the comma preceding, and 
at the end of the parenthesis, I have adhered to that singularity, if it is 
such, for no other material reason than simply because I fell into this 
mode without much thinking about it, in the early part of the volume. 
At the same time, it does appear to me to be a proper mode, for the plain 
reason that a reader aloud, or a speaker, actually does and must make a 
pause at the beginning and end of a parenthesis. But perhaps you will 
say, that the graphical mark of a parenthesis is considered as being itself 
the mark for a pause, as well as the mark for a distinct thought. If that 
be the truth, and a settled point, my practice is certainly wrong. 

A number of your remarks, you would be fully aware, cannot be ap¬ 
plied to use now that the whole thing is printed and ended; as when, 
for instance, you suggest that certain associations for benevolent pur¬ 
poses might, in one place, have been pertinently alluded to. 

In one expression you seem to impute “ numerous obscurities ” to the 
composition, that is, to the meaning. It would be foolish to assume that 
there are really none, in a book of which so large a proportion consists 
of reflections, sentiments, and generalities, many of them of a nature 
remote from the obviousness of common-place ; but I must keep firmly 
to my text, that if the reader thinks the obscurities are “ numerous,” it 
is very much his own fault. 

Very great pains have been taken with the “ Discourse ” part of the 
book; and I am disposed to account the last paragraph in the volume 
about the most successful sample of amendment in the whole of it. 
That paragraph had not from the first satisfied me. The object was, to 
pass from that particular topic, from the one specific “ form ” of evil (the 
paganism of the East) to make the peroration the more solemn, the more 
applicable to duty in general, and to every one’s duty, and also the more 


LETTERS. 


25 

correspondent to the comprehensive view of moral evil at the beginnin<T 
of the Discourse, by directing the concluding thoughts to the great 
general view of the conflict against sin. This was not, I always felt, 
successfully done in the original form. The transition was abrupt; and 
some of the first sentences of the passage, though they had the right 
onalerial, did not develope it clearly. But how many hours of the utmost 
ellbrt of my mind it cost to put the paragraph into its present form ! 
What an effort to reduce the wide, and remote, and shadowy, element 
of the thought to what, I am willing to believe, is now a definite expres¬ 
sion !* 


* FIRST EDITION. 

“ My brethren, against this pro¬ 
digious form, and against the whole 
dreadful pcmver, of evil, it is our vo¬ 
cation to be engaged in the war. It 
were in vain to wish to escape from 
the condition of our place in the uni¬ 
verse of God. Amidst the darkness 
that veils from us the state of that 
Viist empire, we would willingly be 
])er3uaded that this our world may 
be the only region (excepting that of 
penal justice), where the cause of 
evil is permitted to maintain a con¬ 
test. Here perhaps may be almost 
its last encampm.ent, where its pro¬ 
longed power of hostility may be 
suffered, in order to give a protracted 
display of the manner of its destruc¬ 
tion. Here our lot is cast, on a 
ground so. awfully pre-occupied ; a 
calamitous distinction ! but yet a 
sublime one, if thus we may render 
to the eternal King a service in 
which better tribes of his creatures 
may not share ; and if thus we may 
be trained, through devotion and 
conformity to the celestial Chief in 
this warfare, to the final attainment 
of what he has promised, in so many 
illustrious forms, to him that over- 
cometh. We shall soon leave the 
region where so much is in rebellion 
against our God. We shall go where 
ail that pass from our world must 
present themselves as from battle, or 
be denied to mingle in the eternal 
joys and triumphs of the conquer¬ 
ors.”—Pp. 131, 132. 


THIRD EDITION. 

“ For us, and our period of time, 
there is not only this one grand do¬ 
mination of moral evil, standing in 
hideous tyranny over a large portion 
of our world ; in many forms of more 
immediate invasion of ourselves, that 
worst enemy maintains a powerful 
and dreadful presence. We require 
to be kept in a habitual and alarming 
sense of the fact, that the one thing 
in the creation which surpasses all 
others as an object for hatred, is here 
amidst us, and all around, in many 
diversities of malignant existence, 
and with all of them it is our voca¬ 
tion to be at enmity and war. It 
were in vain to seek to escape from 
the condition of our place in the do¬ 
minions of God. A mind of wan¬ 
dering and melancholy thought, im¬ 
patient of the grievous realities of 
our state, may at some moments 
almost breathe the wish that we had 
been a different order of beings, in 
another dwelling-place than this, 
and appointed on a different service 
to the Almighty. In vain ! Here 
still we are, to pass the first part of 
our existence in a world, where it is 
impossible to be at peace, because 
there has come into it a mortal ene¬ 
my to all that live in it. Darkness 
and silence over the universe deny 
us all knowledge of the inhabitants 
of its innumerable worlds ; but wo 
would willingly believe that this 
may be the only region (except tha^ 
of penal justice), where the caused 
evil is permitted to maintain a con 
test. Here perhaps may be almost 
its last encampment, where its pro¬ 
longed power of hostility may be 
suffered, in order to give a protracted 
display of the manner of its appoint- 


26 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


In this same Discourse my veneration for my old master’s authority 
has suppressed two anti-cleric clauses ; one in the enumeration of tho 
classes in which there were found the most virulent enemies of the pro¬ 
ject for converting the Hindoos ; and one where, in a mock supposition 
of a crusade of officers, merchants, &c., against the Hindoo superstition, 
prelates ” were put at the head, or at the tail of the expedition. This 
should be somewhat of a set-off against the story of the hull-bailing.'^ 

Several sentences which your marginal marks had pointed to as capa¬ 
ble of correction, remain as they were. I perceived the defects clearly 
enough, but 1 was at last pressed for time (by the printer, whom I had 
at your direction be-labored), was become exceedingly jaded by long 
exertion, and did not see how to mend the faults (consistently with the 
compression and condensation which I have uniformly labored to pre¬ 
serve), without spending some hours a-piece on each of thos# sentences. 
It is amazing what trouble it is to re-construct, in an amended form, a 
single sentence, when it includes several ideas, when you have to take 
care of the juncture with what precedes and follows, and when you 
are resolved it shall be but one sentence, in whatever form it may be 
put. 

Reverting to your “ authority,” it would be little less formidable to me 
than any exertion of that of the Grand Turk, if it could be made per¬ 
emptory and absolute in the injunction conveyed in the last lines of your 
note (to Holdsworth), viz., “ to project another book forthwith.” Some 
time must pass before any authority can bring me into this hard service 
again. During a life which, I acknowledge with regret, and often with 
remorse, has been on the whole a very indolent one, I have never before 
made a mental exertion that has at all sensibly affected my health; but 
this last has done so. The confinement has been almost complete ; and 

ed destruction. Here our lot is cast, 
on a ground so awfully pre-occupied 
—a calamitous distinction ! but yet 
a sublime one, if thus we may render 
to the eternal King a service of a 
more arduous kind than it is possi¬ 
ble to the inhabitants of any other 
world than this to render him ; and 
if thus we may be trained, through 
devotion and conformity to the celes¬ 
tial Chief in this warfare, to the 
final attainment of what he has pro¬ 
mised, in so many illustrious forms, 
to him that overcometh. We shall 
soon leave the region where so much 
is in rebellion against our God. Bm 
we shall go where all that pass from 
our world must present themselves 
as from battle, or be denied to nain- 
gle in the eternal joys and triumphs 
of the conquerors.”—Pp. 50S-510. 

• Evils of Popular Ignorance, third edit., p. 102; edit., 1845, p. 7Q. 


LETTEKS. 


27 


the continuance of the secluded exercise has been the greater from the 
circumstance that the excessively frail and delicate state of my excellent 
wife’s health, put her in the autumn under the most peremptory inter¬ 
diction of the medical folk to venture, even for an hour, into this miser¬ 
ably cold house. The attempt to pass a winter in it would, I have no 
manner of doubt, have been fatal. She has accordingly not been within 
its walls this nine or ten months, nor will venture to come within them 
for some weeks to come, nor probably to go out of doors at Overn, where 
she has been through the winter, in a house which makes absolutely a 
quite different climate from what it is in this. We shall leave this at 
all events at Michaelmas, without as yet having any decided prospect 
where to go next;—probably somewhere nearer to the city. This de¬ 
privation of domestic society, in which a number of the hours of the 
day used to be employed, in a much easier manner than the garret-den 
requires, has for the last half year consigned nearly the whole of my 
time to this same garret. And the very sensible physical bad effects 
require that I should for some time run loose. I am going about a week 
hence to spend a week or two at Worcester, amidst a deluge of vernal 
beauty. 

.... I must endeavor (and I implore divine influence and assist¬ 
ance both to endeavor, and to endeavor with some effect) to do what little 
I can for God and religion in the latter part of my life. It is with deep 
regret that in this reference I often review its general course hitherto. 
In this regret I often congratulate you in my thoughts, on having em¬ 
ployed the very long series of years since we were associates at Bristol, 
so very much in the manner that you would be grateful to heaven for 
having been led to employ them in, if you were now expecting an im¬ 
mediate summons to leave the world. 

In concluding I would request you, my old, and dear, and invariably 
and unalterably respected friend, to accept my grateful acknowledgments 
for the interest you take Ir* what I am doing, or may have done. Be¬ 
lieve me never to have been unobservant or insensible of this, however 
seldom I may have expressed such feelings as I am doing now. I per¬ 
fectly know that (after my wife) there is no mortal who will, with respect 
to this book, for instance, take a tenth part of the friendly and prolonged 
interest that you do. 

As to that iniquitous sentence in the Discourse,* after all, it would be 
foolish to account it so precious a jewel that not for the world should it 

* The administration of the funds for the ceremonial and abominations 
of idolatry, has been, to a very great extent, taken under the authoiity 
and care of the reigning power, composed of persons zealous, on this nearer 
side of a certain extent of water, for the established Christian religion; 
which establishment has also been recently extended to that further side, 
_with what effect toward exploding, or even modifying, this very marvel¬ 
lous policy, or whether deemed to be perfectly harmonious with it, we 
must wait to be informed.” —Missionary Discourse, p. 43, third edit., p. 
411. 



28 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


be left out, if any decided good were to be gained by its exclusion. 
But in the first place, the most of any harm it could do me has been 
done already. Secundo, its omission (so far as it can be supposed so 
slight a circumstance would attract any one’s notice) would look like an 
acknowledgment of the author that he had done wrong, which, in this 
case, would be a most false impression ; or supposing it regarded as a 
time-serving omission, you know well in what manner Dr. Paley’s omis¬ 
sion, in later editions of his Moral Philosophy, of the sentence, “ The 
divine right of kings is the divine right of constables,”'^' was regarded 
by honest men, and indeed by those who had no honesty to bo offended. 
Tertio, the erasure (still on the supposition that such a circumstance 
could attract any notice) would give the bigoted traducer license to say, 
in the absence of the clause or sentence, that there had been in that 
place a most scandalous and malicious libel. The best way therefore 
will be, I think, to let the sentence stand as it is, and put a few lines of a 
note at the bottom, expressing in slight terms that the writer has been told 
that it has displeased some readers, but he should have been glad to know 
why;—and then just putting and leaving the case:—The government 
do two distinct things in India; they formally support and administer 
many of the idolatrous institutions, and they appoint there a Christian 
established church ;—do they, or do they not, deem these two measures 
in harmony ? If they do not, what is to be thought of such conduct ? 
if they do, where is the wrong of the writer’s surmising that they 
do? ... . 


CXIV. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

Downend, April 30, 1821. 

My dear Friend,— .... I hope you will give some credit when I 
say, that I did sincerely intend to answer, with little delay, your former 
letter. And also, you will understand how an almost invincible indis¬ 
position to writing of every kind may be augmented in the particular 
instance when we are sensible we cannot say that which would exactly 
please those to whom we write. I am alluding to the project of a monu¬ 
ment to my revered old tutor. I will acknowledge that I have progressively 
acquired an aversion to all honorary monuments—excepting such as 
remaining from very ancient times are interesting to taste and imagina¬ 
tion, just in the character of antiquities. As to such as are erected 
now, they are useless if the persons to whom they are raised would be 
remembered without them ; and they are useless if those persons would 
not be remembered without them. 

If a man has left monuments of himself in valuable works, of any 

* Vide Hume’s Essays, Vol. i., p. 446, Essay xii.—“ A constable, there* 
fore, no less than a king, acts by a divine commission, and possesses an 
indefeasible right.” 




LETTERS. 


29 


kind, literary or otherwise, which will engage attention and esteem long 
after he is departed, an inscribed and figured piece of stone (generally, 
besides, ill done as a matter of art) seems an idle superfluity. If he has 
not left such memorials, the monument will be of no use to his name, in 
future times. For if the man is unknown, the monument is merely a 
thing standing by itself, and does not bring the spectator into any sort 
of recognition of him—even supposing the spectator to believe the 
laudatory testimony inscribed upon it. But the worst of the matter is, 
that he will not feel the slightest confidence in the truth of such testi¬ 
mony. “ It may be true,” he will say, “ but the contrary is quite as pro¬ 
bable.” Nothing is more notorious than the utter unworthiness of faith, 
which, as a general fact, is chargeable on monumental tributes. It is so 
notorious, that any particular monument which may bear a true testi¬ 
mony, will fall hereafter under the same incredulity, unless it is verified 
by other known and convincing memorials ;—and if there he such me¬ 
morials, then the monument is superfluous. 

I recollect, that just about the time (perhaps a week before) that I re¬ 
ceived your letter on the subject, I happened, in a place of worship, to 
see a recently erected monument to a worthy minister who had been 
dead between twenty and thirty years. The greater number of the lines 
and epithets were appropriate, but there was one, of a very prominent 
nature, which I knew to be totally false ;—false, not only in the sense 
that that was not the truth, but that a contrary expression would have 
been the truth. This marble, however, may remain probably as long as 
the excellent wall to which it is fixed, to be sometimes carelessly glanced 
at, by some individual in the congregation, knowing nothing of the man 
whose name is so recorded, and perhaps transiently, and with perfect in¬ 
difference, thinking and saying within himself.—“ I wonder whether, if 
the truth could be known, he was any such man as there described.” 

.... Last autumn, after an interval of perhaps fourteen years! I 
saw for a short time our highly estimable old friend, Mr. Greaves, and 
his domestic associates ; from whom I received a great deal of informa¬ 
tion about you, and the persons and circumstances of a neighborhood to 
which I have been, almost an age of man, a stranger. , 


CXV. TO JOHN SHEPPARD, ESQ. 

1821 . 

.... If I were to spend the remainder of the week in social gratifi¬ 
cation at F-, I should be little prepared even for this ;—yet for this I 

should not so much mind, in a small place one is accustomed to, and 
among a small assemblage of old friends, one could say something or 
other to the purpose, and should not care much about the quo modo. But 
the two ensuing days would really be, for me, so miserably slow as I am 
in putting together my intellectual materials, utterly insufficient for a 






30 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


fair preparation for the occasion of the next week. And besides, I find 
a languid tone of health into which I have latterly fallen, very seriously 
and injuriously affected by a forced and severe mental exertion. I have 
never recovered from the effect of the five or six months of iron bondage 
and labor in new ivorking the book business for the second c dition, last 
winter. 

These sermons for insliluiions, &c., are a miserable sort of work for 
me, and I mean never to do any more of it. I am always quite certain 
I should have no “ liberty,” as we of this profession name it, if I should 
venture exteni'poraneously in large places to which one is totally unac¬ 
customed. And then, as I have absolutely no memory at all, my preme¬ 
ditations are totally useless to me, unless, as I go on, I secure them in 
writing. Therefore, for these occasions, I am obliged to write nearly 
half as much as what is to be said. The consequence is most wretched; 
for unless I have a long time, after this writing is done, to read many 
times over the said indited sentences and hints, so as to have some little 
command of them beyond the immediate reach of my eye, I am ham¬ 
pered and stiffened in the delivery, having neither the certainty of read¬ 
ing, nor the ease of speaking. 


CXVl. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

Downend, September 22, 1821. 

.... I suppose all the prominent circumstances (of a local nature) 
about your residence remain much as they were so many—many years 
since. I retain in my mind a lively picture of it, though less vivid and 
complete than of Brearley Hall, and the house, gardens, &c., at Foot. 
Those are the places of which I have the most of that kind of recollec¬ 
tion which poets are so fond of describing. Subsequently to my several 
years’ sojourn in those scenes, and in the society of the few coevals for 
whom I grew to feel a deep and unalterable regard (I need not say I 
cbiefly mean yourself, Mr. Greaves, and your estimable sister),—subse¬ 
quently to that season, I seemed to have retained but little capacity for 
acquiring interesting associations with places. Not I hope defective in 
grateful recollection of the kindness experienced from individuals in 
every place where my lot has been cast for a while, I yet feel but little 
of anything partaking of romantic sentiment in going back in imagina¬ 
tion, to one, or another, of the local stages, if it may be so expressed, of 
thirty years of unsettled life. Nor can this appear strange, when I may 
fairly say, with respect to every place where a considerable space and 
time has been passed, that my habitual wish has been to leave it. As to 
any jne of them, I should have revolted at the idea (supposing some 
voice, believed oracular, had pronounced it), that I should remain there 
the whole of this short life. As to the greater number of the places of 
sojourn, I should have been much chagrined at such an oracle pronounc- 



LETTERS. 


31 


mg at the commencement of the residence, that I should stay as long as 
in fact I did stay. Nevertheless, I always dread, when it comes to the 
point, the trouble of a removal,—regret to leave some small number of 
persons in the place, and always extremely dislike at first any new situa¬ 
tion. There may be a great deal of perversity of feeling in all this, and 
I cannot be unaware of its too probably involving a serious reproach— 
namely, that of being too little intent, on serving in each, in any, in 
every situation the supreme Master, and doing every practicable good to 
follow mortals. At the same time, it will sometimes appear to my fancy, 
as if such an unsettled course were, more in analogy with the condition 
of this life, as a transient sojourn—as a pilgrimage to another w'orld. 
Well, whether in a stationary or more wandering way of life, we shall 
at no very distant period attain the final term. Within this week I have 
completed my fifty-first year, and I believe that you have attained the 
same age, or perhaps a year or two beyond me. It is sometimes only 
through the absolute force of dates, that I can believe I have advanced so 
far tow'ard old age. But (should life be protracted) it will not be long 
before other mementos than those of mere chronology will powerfully 
press upon us. Indeed, in the article of sight (so important especially 
to a person whose business is among books and writing), I am of late 
receiving strong admonition every day and hour. Let us commit all to 
Him who has been our great benefactor and guardian hitherto, and pray 
that the latter part of our life, short as it will probably be in comparison 
with the portion which is past, may be, in the most important respects, 
far the best of it all—that our descendants may see happier times in this 
world, and that they and we may all at length meet in an infinitely bet¬ 
ter. I am glad to believe, that )mu have cause for pleasing anticipations 
in regard to your family; while your pensive recollections of one no 
longer seen among them, must be mingled often with inexpressible de¬ 
light. 

.... As a monument was to be raised to my venerable tutor, I am 
glad it has been done by a real artist. The inscription in its final form, 
appears to be altered for the better. Had I written immediately after 
reading your letter, I should have had a number of things to say in 
comment on your observations on the use of monuments. With respect 
to Westminster Abbey especially, I recollect that I was to have said that, 
though I have gone to the expense of a most admirable graphical work 
respecting it, it would at anytime be a great luxury to me, to accompany 
a few athletic men with pole-axes to be most vigorously wielded, with 
just here and there an omission, in a process which I will leave to your 
imagination. With the here and there excepted instance, what do we 
see exhibited in memorial there, but the names and insignia of beings 
who were a nuisance and a pest upon the earth ? You quote Nelson’s 
speech, with a flattering change of words;—it was (as recorded), “ A 
Peerage or Westminster Abbey,'’ an expression which I have always 
recollected as one of the most remarkable displays ever made of a con- 


32 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


^emptible littleness of passion and purpose in what is called a great man. 
....lam pleased to liear your testimony, that the book I published 
some time since is materially improved in the second edition. Had this 
not been perceptible, the case would have been one of the most deplorable 
instances of labor lost. 


CXVII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.* 

Stapleton, JVovember, 1822. 

My dear Sir, — .... Even your vanity will hardly be competent 
to imagine how much I have felt the loss of your near neighborhood. 
Going into Bristol, or the thought of doing it (I mean for an hour or a 
day, not for residence), is now quite a different thing, and I do it much 
less frequently. With all due regard for m.y friends there (and they are 
very worthy ones), I must confess that the special point of attraction is 
gone ; and the grievance is, that there is no hope of its being there 
again. My maledictions have not been slight, nor seldom repeated, upon 
that Methodist system of yours, which will let nothing stay in a place 
that one would most wish to keep there. My good wife most cordially 
says Amen, to these imprecations,—till we recollect that this is doubt¬ 
less a part of the system tending very powerfully on the whole to its 
utility. 

You allow me to believe that, as yet, Mrs. Hill feels no bad effects of 
the London atmosphere. And I cannot say that I much wish she 
should, since any change of station, which that might cause at the end 
of the first year, would be little likely to bring her and you to any 
locality nearer Bristol. It might only take you to Scotland, or nobody 
knows where. On another account, however, I could certainly wish 
you compelled to change the situation to one of less work, bustle, and 
interruption. For 1 think that project about Baxter is eminently worth 
prosecuting; and I take it to be quite certain that no such thing can be 
effectually done till you retire to a more quiet position. It will else pro¬ 
bably never be accomplished at all; or if it should, it will be in a man¬ 
ner which will oblige you to cant a preface in the customary strain of— 

The author is sensible the work is done in a very imperfect manner, far 
from fully satisfactory to himself, and he hopes his readers will allow him 
to apologize by pleading want of time, great variety of avocations,” &c., 
&c., &LC,., to which the readers might, in this case, very rightly reply, “ And 

* Mr. Foster’s acquaintance with Mr. Hill began about the year 1S12, 
probably on the occasion of Mr. Hill’s visiting his sister, who resided in 
the neighborhood of Bourton. Twenty years later, Mr. F., in one of his 
letters, speaks of him as “ a man of very great and rare excellence; pious, 
benevolent, intelligent, and of liberal spirit and sentiments, with large 
knowledge and experience of mankind.” The letters addressed to him in 
these volumes, and selected from a much larger mass, sufficiently attest Mr. 
Foster’s high estimate of his character, and the cordiality of their friend¬ 
ship. Mr. Hill survived Mr. F. only a few weeks. 



LETTERS. 


33 


whose fault is it that you were in all this bustle ? Is it any satisfaction 
to us, the purchasers and readers, that you preferred your temporary ro\’^ 
oi popularity to the benefit you might have afforded ws, and those after us, 
by doing the thing in a much better manner ?” I doubted whether you 
would have much success in the collation of the remainder'of old Rich¬ 
ard’s works. Your career of cheap purchases, at least, is nearly at an 
end. You will have no more opportunities of establishing among dealers 
such a character as you have left behind you among those in Bristol; 
namely, that of the hardest bargainer in Christendom. I dare say it 
would be very edifying to you to hear them make the comparison be¬ 
tween you and —somebody else. 

.... But too much of books. Next time you can afford leisure enough 
to fill a sheet, I shall hope to hear how you like the new situation in 

respect to its religious aspect, and its preaching services.I hope 

that at all events you will see proof that you are not laboring in vain 
with respect to the best cause and its divine JMaster. For myself, I am 
earnestly wishing to be much more cordially and zealously devoted in 
this most important direction. 1 have engaged to preach every Sunday 
afternoon, for some intermediate time, depending on circumstances, in a 
small meeting-house between here and Downend; to begin next Sun¬ 
day. 


CXVIII. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

Stapleton, February 26, 1823. 

...... Next opportunity I shall beg your acceptance of a copy of 

the new edition (just now about got through the press) of certain four 
essays. I should not think of offering you a thing of such worn-out 
interest, but just for the reason that this edition has undergone positively 
the last revisal that I shall ever give it. It may stand on your shelf 
simply in the quiet character of being, in a small degree, a better book 
than any former copy. The several editions since the second, have 
passed with perhaps hardly half a dozen corrections. This last cannot 
l)ave received less than a thousand, though I give not the slightest hint 
of any such thing, to displease any purchaser of former editions. Most 
of these tinkerings are utterly trivial; but some half a hundred of them, 
or more, are reconstructions of sentences, and attempts (in many of the 
instances successful ones, I believe), to bring out the lazy or clumsy 
meaning more distinctly. In some of the instances it is not that the 
sentence itself, taken separately, is better said, but the modification is 
meant lo cure 9 ome little matter of incongruity or dissonance with its 
neighbors, which I detected in a severe examination. There is but very 
little enlargement, not probably the amount of twenty pages. 

From little matters to great:—in what spirit do you at Worcester talk 
of the dreadful omens that are darkening over Europe ? The omens, it 
is too probable, of as awful a commotion as ever convulsed it. In what 

VOL. 11. 3 

\ 






34 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


style do those famous Peace Society gentlemen talk of it ? What do 
they say that the Spanish nation should do ? But truly what signifies 
what they say ? One does hope in Providence, that if this war is to 
rage, it will end in mightier prostrations of dominion than even Bona¬ 
parte accomplished, and of infinitely nobler tendency and result. 


CXIX. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

J\^ear Haverfordwest, September 10, 1823. 

My dear Sir, — .... I have been more than a fortnight in this 
quarter, the coast of St. Bride’s Bay, where the sea is clear of all fresh 
water modification, and the air is most pure and delightful since the fine 
weather set in. I expect some ten or twelve days more of it, having 
written to settle the omission of one of my appointed lectures, in order to 
prolong the time.* I must then return from utter idleness to hard work, 
with a sort of pleasure to withdraw from necessarij idleness, but with 
intense aversion to necessary labor; this latter feeling, partly owing to 
constitutional indolence, and partly to the miserable effect which hard 
labor latterly has on my health, to which a single week, or a single day, 

* “ Do you honestly think that without any considerable awkwardness 
or fuss of explanation, the first appointment in the sequel of my lecture- 
services could be rendered blank 1 The case is this—that owing to rain 
every day, indisposition of some of the family in consequence of long and 
violent sea-sickness, and several other circumstances, I have been pre¬ 
vented, inevitably, from getting actually to the sea-side till this afternoon 
(we are to go thither this evening). To be back in Bristol against the 10th 
of September, 1 shall be reduced to the mere space of one "single week at 
sea, a very incompetent length of time to derive much benefit, on the score 
of health, from the situation,—a circumstance which I had no cause to 
anticipate at the time I left Bristol. . . If one will be of any service, the 
addition of towards a fortnight more would obviously be a great amend¬ 
ment of the matter. Longer than so I should not stay, though there were 
no lecture engagement in the case. Nevertheless, I will cut off the time 
at the end of next week, or the beginning of the following, and be at the 
accustomed post if Dr. R. and you shall judge that the non-fulfilment of 
this one instance of the settled appointment would be really an impro¬ 
priety. My dear sir, I may surely be confident, that vou will not misap¬ 
prehend this language. It is not, you will give me credit for it, that I am 
attaching any manner of importance to the lecture itself—done or omitted. 
The thing is, whether the previous public notice of such omission, the 
explaining of the cause to the circle of friends, &c ,&c., would not seem 
far too much ado about the matter; whether it would not be like makino- 
an idle fuss about health, and so forth. You will I am sure, look at the 
case just as I am wanting you to look at it. I am sorry to have occasion 
to make such an application. Should the omission be tliought allowable, 
you will not doubt my perfect readiness to perform the adjusted number of 
these services by a lecture additional after the close of the series and the 
year, if there shall be no resumption of these services for a following year. 
I may be allowed to take credit for not wishing to filch an exemption from 
any portion of the stipulated labor.”—Jlfr Foster to the Editor: dated 
Haverfordwest, Aug. 29, 1823. 




LETTERS. 


35 


of hard, mental exercise does sensible injury. And, unhappily, any 
mental labor is to me a hard business. It is always against the grain, and 
a business of dogged self-denial; especially anything in the composition 
way. I honestly believe I have never, at any one time, written the amount 
of a single page (of course, not including letters), without a painfully re¬ 
pugnant sense of toil; such a sense of it as always far more than to over¬ 
balance any sense of pleasure ; and such as, in ninety-nine cases out of a 

hundred, quite to annihilate any such feeling of pleasure. 

I should have been very happy to have been spending these two fine 
weeks in the friendly society of Worcester. But S., as I have said, 
urged, in the most peremptory professional terms, “ the sea, the sea,” 
from which I do calculate on returning considerably the better. There 
have, however, been no excursions or adventures ; for in a boat one 
would have little but sickness ; and horses, this being harvest time, are 
hardly to be procured. An excursion, however, is intended a day or two 
hence, to that very interesting locality, the city of St. David’s, so strik¬ 
ing by its antiquities, and a solemn character of desolation, both in the 
town itself and the natural scenery around it. North Wales remains 
always on my fancy as a matter of anticipation, for one of these days, if 
life be prolonged. It cannot be so fine an adventure, in some respects, 
the next time, as the former one, now so long since past. Will there be 
a new and specific interest from the circumstance that we shall then be 
so much older ?—that we shall then have so many years less for looking 
on the scenes of this world ?—that wo shall then be so much nearer the 
period for passing into another world, to see what there is there 1 Such 
a consideration would most certainly excite a pensive sentiment; but, at 
the same time, an animated and sublime one, if we are but conscious of 
being, in proportion to this approximation, the better prepared for the 
great transition. Let us, my dear sir, apply ourselves most earnestly 
and assiduously to this great purpose. Now that I have reached the 
fifty-third year of life, I am very often admonished and reminded of the 
decline of life. The mere time is such an admonition; and the indifferent 
health of the last two or three years is a strong and constantly returning 
reinforcement of it. 


CXX. TO JOSEPH COTTLE, ESQ. 

Tuesday Morning, 1823. 

My dear Sir, —It will seem to you a little strange that I should send 
a letter to reach you within a few hours only of the time that I was to 
see you. And I am casting about to think of any adequate terms of 
apology in which I could introduce the letter as a substitute for myself. 
I will just say the simple tilath. My excellent wife has suffered, during 
the preceding two days, a succession of peculiarly severe head-aches, 
which, though now gone by, have left her in a state of great languor and 
prostration. She does not often experience this complaint in anything 





36 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


like the same degree ; but when it does attack her, it leaves for a while 
this consequence of extreme languor which necessarily very much alFects 
her spirits, as well as that physical strength which is at all times but 
feeble. 

Now', for several weeks past, between visits, preaching engagements, 
and tasks to be done in seclusion at home, I have very rarely passed a 
single evening in her company. And there is no other company ever 
that she can have in this place, except that of the two children ; at least, 
hardly ever. Just now her sister Cox is on a visit at a distance. 'I’liis 
solitude naturally adds to the effect (it would in any case do so) of such 
a depression of spirits as that which these violent hcad'aches have tem¬ 
porarily caused. And making the case my own, I cannot help feeling 
that I should feel it somewhat hard to be just in that state, again left by 
the domestic associate the whole afternoon and evening, while that 
associate should go to be in great social interest elsewhere. The case 
being so, my dear sir, will not you, and my excellent friends your sisters, 
candidly accept this as an apology for my saying, that I hope you will 
allow me to exchange the appointment for my having the pleasure of 
dining with you to-day for an easy visit to take some of your tea, one of 
the evenings toward the end of the week ? I will allow myself to feel 
assured that you will so far excuse me. 


CXXI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, A'ov. 11, 1823. 

.When you write, have the kindness to recite the curious 

anecdote about-. Wishing to think well of him (as one does on 

the whole), one is not exactly pleased with that story about the betting. 
Still, however, one can deem such a thing not incompatible with being 
honest and in earnest about religion. In a buoyant, dashing, daring, 
wild spirit, there may be many things not so incompatible, which would 
yet appear very strange and exceptionable to sedate persons, of nicely 
regulated feelings and habits. 

.In my last I intended to have mentioned that on and in the 

coach from Ilaverford, I met with a personage who signified, though in 
terms of some balancing and uncertainty, an intention to do the Metho¬ 
dist^ the honor of throwing his great force into their ranks. He had 
walked forward and was taken up a mile or two on the road; and I 
heard the coachman’s leering explanation to the guard, of whom this 
personage might be ; namely, a gentleman who had lately finished a two 
years’ course in your jail, and was come out a flaming Christian and a 
preacher. A further explanation was, that a companion, who had 
walked with him so far on the road, and there parted in a most friendly 
style, was the very fellow that had just been tried and iniquitofisly 
acquitted at your assizes for plundering the miller. This apostle was in 





LETTERS. 


37 


the inside of the coach, and when I got in he was mighty forward, I 
thought, with his religious books and his religious talk (I being a perfect 
stranger to him). I somehow Betrayed a hint of knowing who the young 
fellow, his companion, w^as ; and then it came out in curious self-display, 
who he himself was; and I might have read I know not how many 
authentic testimonials to his conversion, his reformed character; and I 
did hear his own account of his highly popular acceptance and efficacy 
as a preacher. The people crowded and wept to hear him. His im¬ 
prisonment, he said, was from a cause that did him no dishonor; though 
in other respects he had, he said, been a wild fellow. His being in such 
friendly company with that acquitted thief he accounted for on the score 
of his having been of some signal spiritual use to that thief’s father. He 
would know to what religious class I might belong. Could I, even in 
such company, repress the vanity of saying, that my chief acquaintance, 
in that part of the country, was with the Meihodistsl He did tliem the 
honor to applaud them, and thought he should, after a little while, add 
himself to that noble class, evidently deeming that they ouglit and v/ould 
make much of such an ally. He remained in the coach after I mounted 
the outside, and left it, if I remember, at Carmarthen. I well knew that 
shrewdness and discretion were at this time at the head of the Methodist 
{Society at Haverford; and certainly wished that those qualities might 
not be put in abeyance in such a case. He may be a sincere convert (1 
should say might theii, for by this time possibly he is completely the 
reverse), but he certainly had no right notion of the ground on which a 
man of his previous conduct ought, for some considerable time to stand. 
The coachman and guard gaily agreed that he might probably make an 
excellent trade of his new calling. 


CXXII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

.... I am much interested and pleased with your account of friend 
John. There truly needed no such ceremony about inducing me to 
send him a letter. But I am a most incompetent adviser in anything 
about literary plans and pursuits. On other topics, of more general in¬ 
terest to a young man, I may have gained from experience, observation, 
and reflection, somewhat of wherewithal for counselling a new adven¬ 
turer in life and the world. As to the question (for the next ensuing 
stage of his studies), between mathematics, and a still further occupa¬ 
tion with the classics, it would, in my apprehension, turn very much on 
the estimate of the student’s mental character. The mathematics, by 
all means, for a youth of excessive fancy, ardent sentiment, roving 
thought, and romantic propensity. To such an one, the sooner the 
better a process is applied for regulating, cooling, methodizing, consoli¬ 
dating the habits and operations of his mind. But, on the other hand, 
supposing his imagination and sentiment not yet fully developed; his 




38 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


perception of what is beautiful, gi'aceful, or sublime, to be somewhat 
behind his attainments in knowledge and understanding; his taste un¬ 
matured ; then I should think the more advisable thing to be a longer, 
full addiction to the studies of ancient poet^ and eloquence. One 
would be very desirous to expand, and warm, and ignite (shall I say), 
and fertilize the faculties, before applying the process to condense, and 
square, and constrain, and harden them. You will probably not be at 
a loss to judge on which of the two sides of John’s mental economy 
there is the greater need of the appropriate application. From so much 
as 1 have seen of it, I might be inclined to surmise (with the exception, 
indeed, of his political fervor), that it is more on the side of what is de¬ 
nominated sentiment, that he w^ants an addition ; and the enlargement of 
his imagination, the cultivation of his taste, and of the qualities akin 
to these, might be, for some time to come, the more desirable course. 
Mathematics, too soon and too much, might have the effect of hardening 
and maturing the mental fruit before it has received sap enough to swell 
it out to its full size. But in all this, do not consider me as taking on 
myself the office of adviser. 

If friend James’s health shall have attained a tolerable degree of firm¬ 
ness, it would doubtless be a very good thing for him also to go to 
Scotland. ' John’s assistance and co-operation will be of the greatest 
use to him. And if it should happen to be that clever and hopeful fel¬ 
low’s peccadillo to be some trifle too self-sufficient, he will find the dis¬ 
position sensibly checked by seeing something of a great number of 
other clever fellows, whose attainments it will require many a long 
laborious exertion to equal. Young M., a youth of great acquirements 
(chiefly by his own mere exertion), and of great modesty into the bar¬ 
gain, who has been some weeks at home after his first term at Cam¬ 
bridge, says, the most profitable impression made on him on going 
thither, was that of his own insignificance . 


CXXIII. TO MR. J. W. HILL. 

Stapleton, Feb. 6, 1824. 

My dear young Friend John,— A letter some time since from Haver- 
ford, gratified me much, among other things, by information about you; 
the pleasure you feel in your new and remote situation, your studies, 
and the favor you receive from professor Sandford. In that letter it was 
added, that I might give some degree of pleasure, both to the Haverford 
friends and to yourself, by conveying my friendly remembrance to you 
in the shape of a letter. I was pleased at being told so, notwithstanding 
that letter-writing is in itself no favorite employment with me. ... I 
have a very lively and pleasing remembrance of the great number of 
social hours spent, with the family altogether, on'the hill at Bristol, and 
of our later talks, saunterings, and rambles in St. Bride’s Bay. It is 




LETTERS. 


39 


curious, and almost strange to think, how differently we are now situated 
in this great triangle. Western Wales, Glasgow, and Bristol. I often 
regret this prodigious dislocation. But it is the disposition made by 
Providence, and we have each and all our respective duties to perform, 
faithfully and diligently, where our lot is cast. I hope we shall all have 
to remember, both in future time and after all our time is ended, these 
various stations as scenes where we were not placed in vain; and where 
we acquired something, and performed something, of fiever-ending value, 
both to ourselves and others. I earnestly wish your health may con¬ 
tinue uninjured and firm during your studious labors, of your industry 
and great success in which there is not the smallest cause to doubt, any 
more than of the high advantage which you will hereafter, if Heaven 
prolong your life, reap from your attainments. Among us dissenters 
(and I confidently trust you will always remain faithful to the battalion, 
in spite of Mr. B.’s example), there is no one thing more urgently 
wanted (religion out of the question) than a class of vigorously disci¬ 
plined young scholars, thoroughly accomplished in classical literature 
especially, and qualified to take a commanding station in the higher de¬ 
partments of education ; in seminaries and institutions of all kinds, and 
especially in those for the literary and intellectual discipline of young 
preachers, a greater, and still greater number of whom are continuing 
to be required, as religion and the dissenting interests are continuing to 
extend. And dissent, you may be sure, loill continue to extend, in what¬ 
ever proportion true religion and free thinking shall do so, to the ultimate 
abolition of that antichristian nuisance, the established church. But 
we are hitherto sadly deficient in sound, thorough literary and mental 
discipline, both our preachers and the respectable and partially cultivated 
portion of our body. In this view, it is with extreme gratification that I 
tliink of a few young men that I know or hear of, who are, I hope, rising 
up to improve our condition and respectability, in co-operation with 
others that will be gradually added to the honorable fraternity. The 
need and importance of such a class is every year becoming more 
sensibly felt, and every future year their value will be more justly and 
highly estimated. 

I am not, in all this, assuming that you have as yet thought with any 
considerable definiteness, of plans for your future life ; and it is quite 
time enough yet. But I think it is not impertinent thus early and 
strongly to represent to you, of what high account, in one wide and most 
important department, such attainments will be, as you are now in the 
worthy progress of acquiring. This is, indeed, holding out a prospect 
of great labor; but what are we in this world for but to labor, to the 
utmost of our strength, in important service to God and mankind ? It is 
in another world alone, and on no nearer ground, that we can expect to 
be happy, and illuminated, and exalted in virtue, without labor, in the 
painful and toilsome sense of that word. 

Religious admonitions are too familiar to my young friend to need that 


40 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


I should dwell on them, except with specific reference to influences and 
temptations from which your present situation may not be exempt. It 
is too well known, that in the literary and scientific institutions and so¬ 
ciety of Scotland, there is a very pervading spirit of scepticism and in¬ 
fidelity. I trust that your mind will be most carefully guarded against 
this mortal contamination, as well as against all that moral laxity to 
which it leads, and indeed, from which it very chiefly originates. I hope 
in heaven that yoitr manhood will display a faithful and practical devo¬ 
tion to that which, from your infancy, you have been instructed to be the 
highest concern of life, and which very few are deluded and stupified 
enough at the close of life, not to acknowledge to have been so. How 
many at last so acknowledge it with grief, and even despair ! . . . . 


CXXIV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, March 6, 1824. 

My dear Sir, — .... The accident you heard of was three or four 
months since: it was slight, though it might have been serious. I was 
returning from one of the lectures with my sister-in-law, when, a little 
on this side the turnpike near Baptist Mills, some boy threw a squib or 
something of that kind across the road, just under the noses of the horses, 
which instantly started off* with such impetuosity, that the reins broke 
in the man’s hand. They took a sweep to the off-side of the road, so as 
to graze the carriage hard against the high wall, by which the carriage 
was much damaged, the windows broken, and a piece of the glass struck 
the side of my face, where a mark is made that will always remain. 
The man threw himself from the box, with the design to catch hold of one 
of the horses,—but was instantly left in the road, and they gallopped on 
about half a mile, till they were some way up the long ascent of the 
Downend road, when they slackened to a slow pace at last, by which 
time the man rode up, and got before their heads on some horse which 
he had seized at the door ot an inn. There was happily nothing on the 
road, to^ be either met or passed. My companion was not hurt at all, 
and the‘ cut which I received, though of some depth, got well in two or 
three weeks. It was an occasion for specially acknowledging the care 
of a merciful Providence. 

.... A few days since at Strong’s I gave half-a-crown, I did, I really 
did, for an old octavo of Wesley on Original Sin; and through about a 
hundred pages which I have read, he seems to me to talk very much to 
the purpose; but what on such an estimate of human nature he could 
do with his Arminianism—his svjjwient power in man—I cannot divine ; 
perhaps he will make it all plain somewhere in the book, which I imjan 
to read through, and perhaps more than once. 






LETTERS. 


41 


CXXV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, Sept. 1, 1824. 

.... Tlie consequence of long idleness is such that I am mortified 
and astounded to find what a difficulty I have even to understand any¬ 
thing I attempt to read of a harder temper than friend Walter Scott’s 
metaphysics. This very morning, in trying at a section of Lowman’s 
“ Rational of the Hebrew Ritual,” I was obliged to go over the sentences 
again and again, before I seemed to obtain the smallest notion of what it 
was all about; and n»t being honestly able to ascribe the fault to the 
author, I was willing to divide the blame between myself, and the slug¬ 
gish, soporific air and heat here. There is a prodigious difference of 
climate between here and St. Bride’s Bay, unless indeed you have by 
tliis time experienced a very great change even there. A glorious sea¬ 
son, however, for the harvest, which a few more days will complete here¬ 
abouts. 

Among innumerable things wrong about us, there has, to-day, been at 
Dovvnend, one thing right, namely, a baptizing of several persons, includ¬ 
ing a man of very great reading and research, brought up a churchman. 
There never was an instance, I believe, of more deliberate and conscien¬ 
tious conviction, followed out at the cost of an unmitigable hostility to be 
endured from his relatives, with whom his circumstances render it neces¬ 
sary for him at present to reside. A young clergyman, of the evangelical 
class, with whom he has been intimate, liad nearly been betrayed into the 
same predicament, confessing explicitly that he felt ashamed and galled in 
his conscience in the act of sprinkling [infants], and calling it baptism; but 
most opportunely and luckily, he has been saved from plunging into the 
water by the intervention of a young lady of good fortune, and high 
church temperament. 


exxvi. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 


1824. 

.... It occurs to me after each time of seeing you, to wonder how 
silent you are about the “ Life of Richard ” [Baxter]. I suspect you are 
by degrees giving up the design, any further than the compilation for 
Edwards’s edition of the works. And to be sure, whenever one looks 
into anyone of his polemical things, one thinks you are right. I do not 
see how less than a great part of a diligent life would suffice to make 
out any tolerable scheme and history of his opinions and controversies. 
And something of that sort would seem to be required, in a grand, com¬ 
prehensive, well-digested, and final exhibition of his life and character. 
But to say nothing of the length of time this would take, where can 
mortal patience be found to work out such a historical analysis ? And 
indeed, after all, what would be the benefit of it ? A boundless, endless 
maze, and wilderness of debatings, projectings, schemings, and dream- 



42 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ings, about churches, and their constitution and their government; about 
arrangements for union, and terms of communion ;—the numberless pole¬ 
mical notices which he thought himself called upon to take of all the petty 
and spiteful cavillers of his time ;—the hasty productions of an over-offi¬ 
cious zeal to set everybody right about every actual or possible thing;—the 
attenuated, and infinitely multiplex argumentations, in the manner of the 
schoolmen, about trivial niceties in theological doctrine ;—and above all, 
the ever-renewed and fruitless toils to work out a tertium quid from the im¬ 
possible combination of two opposite systems of theology;—what, I repeat, 
would be the use of attempting to find or make a biographical road through 
this vast chaos 1 ... . 


CXXVII. TO THE EUITOK. 
fOn a MS. Translation of Pascal’s Thoughts.] 

1824. 

My dear Sir, —I trust you will excuse the bold liberty I have taken, 
in making so many exceptions and suggestions. I have done it as a 
kind of sample of the manner in which {reviews excepted) I have been 
accustomed to traverse my own matters of composition. 

You will perceive, that I would sometimes adhere more exactly than 
you always do to the turn of expression in the original; but I cannot be 
at all sure, that a perfect master of both languages would not in some 
instances pronounce this punctilious and slavish. There is, however, so 
much of tlfe inind of Pascal often shown in the very cast of his expression, 
that one would wish to keep as ne'ar it as possible. At the same time, 
there is here and there such a parsimony of words, and, we must even 
say, such an obscurity, as to make it indispensable for the translator to 
shape the sentence according to what he can guess of the*meaning. 

In many of the places which I have noted, you may see cause to 
retain your expressions as they stand, in preference to what 1 have 
ventured to suggest,—or to attempt some still difierent construction. 
Many such things are matters of individual taste. What is peculiarly 
to be avoided, in translating Pascal, is, all lengthy formality of phraseo¬ 
logy : he is an admirable example of the contrary—of a simple, direct, 
vital manner of expression. 

In any future portions, that you may wish me to see, I shall not 
trouble you with such frequent exceptions. Indeed, se^-indulgence dic¬ 
tates to desist,^as I find that several whole days hardly suffice for this 
sort of examination of two or three sheets. I will only trouble you so 
far as to make, in passing, some slight note of indication where anything 
strikes me as particularly deserving of another trial of your mind and 
hand. Yours very truly, J. if. 


CXXVIII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, Feb. 25, 1825. 

. . . . 1 was pleased that your own acquaintance with Saunders, and 




LETTERS. 


43 


Catherine’s with his daughter, contributed to give an interest to what I 
wrote respecting the latter. My interference in her ease did n( t involve 
a great deal of what could strictly be called “painful.” The varm re¬ 
gard entertained for each other by the preceptor and the pupil, and the 
pupil’s candor, intelligence, and serious intentness on the great object, 
imparted quite a prevailing character of pleasure to the office, though 
necessarily it was a pleasure of a pensive quality. As my dear friend 
Catherine was well acquainted with Miss S., she will, I know, allow me 
to turn this event into an admonition, by just repeating one of the many 
things said by the young person, who now can speak no more. Within 
a short time of her death, she requested her favorite aunt, who was alone 
attending on her, to enforce it, as from her, on her younger sisters, “ that 
they apply themselves to the great concern while,”—here she was stopped 
by cough and extreme difficulty of breathing, and her aunt finished the 
sentence for her by saying, “while in their youth.” As soon as she 
recovered the power of speaking, she said, very pointedly, “ No,—while 
in their health,''^ signifying, that that was a more uncertain, and might be 
a much more transient thing, than even their youth. To me, this con¬ 
cern and its departed object will be an interesting remembrance as long 
as I live. 

.... The late grand parliamentary debate,—did you take any con¬ 
siderable interest in that huge contest ? It was the most athletic strife 
that has occurred for many years past, in that St. Stephen’s prize-ring. 
We here read almost the entire of the four nights’ debate, as given at 
vast length in the Times paper. We admired exceedingly the mighty 
power and promptitude of mind displayed by the great chiefs in the war¬ 
fare. Plunkett’s speech was a fine exhibition of large and commanding 
intellect; Tierney’s, the happiest possible rally of keen exposure and 
satiric ridicule. For fierce, vengeful, and irresistible assault. Brougham 
stands forth the foremost man, I take it, in all this world. It is ex¬ 
quisitely gratifying to see how his javelins fly at the time-servers and the 
scoundrels. 


CXXIX. TO THE EDITOR. 

1825. 

My dear Sir, —If the alternative were to be hanged, I could make 
you no satisfactory answer. Be thankful that you are not in my shoes. 
“Work double tides !” I feel at this very hour so unwell that I cannot 
work at all; so that I have been forced to relinquish a subject that I had 
thought a little of for Thursday’s lecture, and must have recourse to the 
expedient of vamping up an old sermon for the purpose. 

I now feel that it will be totally impossible for me to do anything at all, 
of any kind, for Pascal; anything that could be completed within less 
than three months, at the least. I am not more sure that I am writing 
these lines, than that I should utterly sink under any attempt at forcing 




44 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


myself to write at the rate of so much or anything near so much, as one 
'printed page per day. This is no pretence or evasion. I never write as 
much as one such page of composition, properly so called, without becom¬ 
ing faint and sickly. My knees have literally trembled under me all this 
day, in consequence of rather a hard effort during part ot the preceding 
day. When I do nothing for a while, 1, like a child, forget to anticipate 
how the case will be when I really shall endeavor to do something. And 
in such a season I innocently say, I hope to do so and so; and thus I was 
betrayed to fancy I could do something for Pascal, perhaps by the time 
of your completion of the undertaking.* But when I do attempt anything, 
then comes again the old consequence, and my wonder at myself that I 
could have been so thoughtless, so little taught by experience, as to ex¬ 
pect and engage to do anything. I deplore both my imbecility (of body 
and mind), and my folly in making any kind of engagements in forget¬ 
fulness of my past miserable experience.It is the plain, unfortunate 

truth that I cannot write, otherwise than a very small paragraph or two, 
at long intervals ; that is, cannot without being made quite ill. 

As to Doddridge, after throwing aside two or three several little lots 
of material, which, in succession, I had meant for that article, I am trying 
to do something in a different way ; and am doing most tamely and 

inefficiently.I had better have proceeded with what I was at 

first, or at second, about; for then it would have been done long since. 
But it is of no use even to reproach myself. .... 


exxx. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

April, 1S25. 

My dear Sir,— . ... 1 am sometimes very much disposed to murmur 
that the little 1 can do towards any sort of usefulness being entirely in 
the intellectual way, the doing it should be so slow, and irksome, and 
painful, and even physically injurious, an operation. Some of the work¬ 
men in the thinking-shop can do about their best with a great degree of 
facility and despatch; can bring thoughts and put them into sentences 
about twenty times as fast as I ever could. In my case, old practice has 
not given the smallest advantage in point of facility. Rather, I think, of 
the two, it has left the business still more slow and laborious than even 
formerly; so that my aversion to the employment has contiiiually 
increased. And yet something like a sense of duty to be trying at it 
has continued to haunt and disturb me. But advancing age, and invin¬ 
cible ill health (a health which suffers peculiarly under this kind of labor), 
certify me that I can never now accomplish much. I will console myself • 
with hoping that what has been done, with any little more that I may be 

* The translation of Pascal’s Thoughts, referred to in this and a preced¬ 
ing letter (p. 42), has since been published, with an Introductory Essay by 
Mr. Isaac Taylor. 




LETTERS. 


45 


able to do, will not leave me altogether under the censure of havino- lived 
in vain. 

Notwithstanding the fatiguing employment I have mentioned,* I was 
tempted, alter I saw you last, to impose on myself a little extra task,— 
that of putting in the shape of a paragraph or two, for my next letter to 
your worship, the topic of our debate that evening in Mrs. F-~’s par¬ 
lor , not so much, however, on your account (you are, I verily believe, 
nearly of the same opinion), but to aid my own wretched memory, by 
collecting into a narrow space,—into a focus, as it w’ere, the particulars 
constituting the argument. Partly from having, unfortunately, alw'ays 
declined the hardship of disciplining my thoughts to system and method, 
and partly from this miserable want of memory, the case is with me, that 
W’henever I attempt to argue a point, I have always to cast about to think 
of something at the time ,—always to begin anew, much as if I had never 
discussed the matter before. To be sure, if there be any question, for 
the disposal of which there are obvious and plentiful resources at hand 
anywhere, at iiny time, independently of such previous adjustment of the 
materials of argument, it is that respecting your notable Arminian tenet 
of a sufficient grace and power (I suppose I may so express it), in pos¬ 
session of all men for their conversion. Yet I think, I will, one of these 
days, try to put in the fewest w’ords, the appeal to fact. And then I shall 
have nothing to do next time, but to amuse myself in observing the 
manner in which you play and quirk about, in attempting to maintain 
a point of the Methodist creed which you do not believe, but dare not 
disown. 


CXXXI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, June 10, 1825. 

. . . .You may chance to have heard or seen some newspaper notice 
of Dr. Ryland’s death. After several months of slow and gradual de¬ 
terioration, he sank very rapidly during the last two or three w’eeks. He 
was sensible to the end ; but was so oppressed by debility and laborious 
breathing during the last few days, that, to the regret of his friends, he 
was unable to hold any material communications with them. Most of 
what he said was in the form of pious ejaculation, mingled with the 
natural expressions of suffering. The funeral was very solemn in effect, 
as well as show. The public exercise was shared by Hughes, Birt, and 
Roberts. Hall yielded to the “ church’s ” solicitation, to come to preach 
the funeral sermon last Sunday. It ended with a long and eloquent 
eulogium of Dr. R., conceived with great discrimination, and not much 
exaggerated. He has consented to publish it. Dr. R. was, indeed, a 
most admirable man in all sorts of goodness. You hope his creed has 
been pardoned him.” If it needed pardon, it was a sin; and I do not see 


Essay to Doddridge’s Rise and Progress. 




46 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


now we are to hope for the pardon of sin not repented of and renounced. 
In this predicament was the guilt of Dr. R. as to his creed. I assure 
you he did not, he really did not, chant, by way of recantation, the pious 
and humble strain of one of the sweet singers of your Israel,— 

“ Take back my interest in the Lamb, 

Unless the Saviour died for all.” 

.... I suppose you will be here a week, at least, at the conference 

time.I like you Methodists better, probably, than does any other 

so sterling a Calvinist. 


CXXXII. TO THE EDITOR. 

Stapleton, Oct., 1825. 

.... Almost every time I have seen the old enemy in Clare Street, 
he has expressed his regret at the loss of you. In a similar way to what 
is sometimes seen in other beasts of prey, he seems to have undergone 
that queer change of feeling, that instead of regarding you as something 
to be devoured, he has come to feel all the dispositions of a friend. My¬ 
self I fear he regards still in the old natural relation, for latterly he has 
once and again bitten, and with no gentle and playful use of the fangs. 
Some notion of the ferocity and violence, and of the painful, and costly, 
and tedious process of cure (if ever cured), may be formed from the 
naming of such things as Brunck’s Sophocles, Burmann’s Ovid, Milton’s 
book, Schleusner’s Lexicon (the new4to. edit.), Lizars’s Anatomy, not to 
mention a number of minor things. I hesitated and demurred, wished 
myself a hundred leagues out of the way of the temptation, was self- 
admonished and self-reproached, but—but—the two fine classics might 
never offer themselves so favorably again—of the 4to. Schleusner there 
were but few copies (professedly) printed, and the larger type was very 
desirable ; Milton’s book was expressly bespoken before the scandalous 
exorbitance of the price was known, or could be anticipated; and 
Lizars’s—I was for the moment just simply insane, for the pleasure of 
having just got out of the Glasgow job. and thinking what a considerable 
(to me considerable) handful of pence I should get for having done it. 
But verily, I not only mean to sin no more at any such rate, or anything 
approaching to it, but believe I never shall. Literally my blood is kept 
warm by my being mad every day, ten times a day, to see the costly and 
(to me) useless piles and ranges of them about this room ; to think what 
money has thus for twenty years been swallowed in an unproductive 
substance ; in many parts of it now vastly depreciated ; in the finer ar¬ 
ticles of it constantly subject to injury from damp and sundry other 
causes; the whole destined, one of these days, to the auctioneer’s ham¬ 
mer, with a vast loss; and the whole foolish process of accumulation 
having actually and literally kept me all the time in a difficulty, not seldom 
a hard one, of making “ both ends meet.” This last evil has sometimes 




LETTERS. 


47 


been so sensible, that, if my good wife were not the most indulgent wo¬ 
man, about, in England, I should have heard lectures, many and long, 
and pronounced in no middle-voice emphasis. Besides all which, it has 
a thousand times occurred to me, with no gentle reproach of conscience, 
how much good, absolute and certain, and of the best kinds, might have 
been done by the expenditure in charity of but a minor part of what a 
rigid domestic economy has left it just possible to divert to the useless 
operation of amassing never-to-be-read books. My dear sir, I have gone 
into this mortifying self-exposure with an honest wish to warn you against 
such folly. We have often made smart pleasantry of the subject, but 
really and truly I am this time quite serious and in earnest to warn you of 
the danger, and against the guilt; for that I feel to be the right word 
in my own case. A man of very narrow means, as mine have always 
been (contrary to what I have heard is sometimes reputed), has no moral 
right to indulge so expensive a taste. Taste, I have said ; for with me 
it has never been in the smallest degree vanity or ostentation, nor 
any passion or fancy for making a library, but merely the attraction, 
indvidually and in detail, of one fine or valuable book, and then an¬ 
other. 

About the Glasgow job I have not heard or seen one word since I sent, 

some month or six weeks since, the concluding pages of MS. 

Whenever it comes to my hands, I shall be afraid to look into it, from 
the strong impression I have in its disfavor; it having been all written 
invitd Minerva (as was once the phrase), and the sight of the proof-sheets 
not having at all brightened my previous estimate. It was a doleful 
sojourn in an indefinite region of common-place. 


CXXXIII. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

Stapleton, Jan. 3, 1826. 

.... Another thing has occurred to me, before I could write two 
lines, namely, that since I was with you, you will have had very different 
concerns on your hands from any little matters of manuscripts and 
books, that is, the frightful disorder and crash in the commercial and 
financial system. It is quite dreadful to hear of the extent and depth of 
the disaster from every side. And it is too much to hope that you will 
not, in spite of the general caution and safety of your management, have 
incurred some portion of a mischief so widely spread, and affecting 
every place. All I can venture to hope is, that your share may be com¬ 
paratively small, even among those Welsh, whose banks (a number of 

them) will have been swept down by the torrent.It is truly a 

wretched state of things, to have been suddenly fallen into by a nation 
which was beginning to exult in its returning prosperity, which was 
boasted of by its governors as surpassing almost all former example. 
But that such a catastrophe could take place, proves the prodigious rot- 





48 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


tenness of the system, and that some such event was really quite neces¬ 
sary to happen, to prevent the concealed mischief from becoming wider 
and more pernicious still. As to the country banks especially, it has 
long struck the apprehensions of every man of sense, that their endless 
multiplication, without check or known limits to their issue, was a most 
flagrant mischief to the community ; not only as putting property every¬ 
where in hazard, but as continually affecting and falsifying the very 
standard of value throughout the nation. At a heavy cost, a great ulti¬ 
mate benefit will have been gained by the breaking up of this vile sys¬ 
tem, and by the discredit and intimidation which will, for a long time, 
prevent the possibility of its renewal, to anything approaching to the 
same iniquitous extent. 


CXXXIV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, March 22, 1826. 

My dear Sir,— It is most distressing to hear what James has suf¬ 
fered, and to think what it is too probable he is suffering still. And I 
can in a measure, but truly in a very imperfect one, conceive what Mrs. 
Hill and you must have suffered in apprehension, and in the most painful 
sympathy. How little (it has often occurred to my thoughts) was so 
melancholy a dispensation anticipated in the lively and delightful days 
and weeks which I spent with'your family at Little Haven, with James, 
as one of the most animated and animating spirits in the society ! while 
every hope, of both his affectionate relatives and his admiring friend, 
calculated on him as rising up with the finest endowments, to be an en¬ 
lightened and estimable man, and to act a valuable and honorable part in 
this mortal life ; and most unwilling am I to admit the feeling, that the 
saying this is an implication that such hope is to be surrendered. I still 
remember there is One with whom “ all things are possible and, at 
the same time you, my dear sir, and my dear and most excellent friend, 
Mrs. Hill, have the most firm and assured belief, that this almighty and 
infinitely beneficent Power will do all things right. If it should be the 
heavenly Father’s good pleasure, that you are thus prematurely to lose 
the object of so much affection and fond anticipation, you know he has 
such reasons for it, that if they could be fully and intelligibly revealed 
to you, you would say, with cordial acquiescence, “It is well; thy will 
be done !” You know that this is so. Think what an inestimable bless¬ 
ing it is, in affliction, to know this for an absolute truth,—to know, that 
if you could have God’s own wisdom to judge of the entire case, you 
would will exactly what he, in the issue of his present dispensation, will 
manifest that he has willed. 

It is consolatory to hear that, under his long and severe sufferings, he 
has displayed a submission and patience worthy of one who knows he is 
in the hands of a wise and merciful Disposer. I hope he will receive 
every’consolatory aid, to sustain him through whatever that sovereign 




LETTERS. 


49 


Disposer has appointed yet to await him : and I pray, and confidently 
trust in the divine merc}^ tliat this most painful discipline may be made 
most salutary, infinitely so, to the immortal spirit, whether the Lord of 
life and death has determined to restore him to health or to call him to 
his presence. I would be most affectionately remembered to him, with 
every expression of the kindest sympathy, and every wish for his wel¬ 
fare. How little, alas ! can all such expressions do to alleviate afflic¬ 
tion like his ! but I pray that he may enjoy the favor of Him who can 
alleviate all suffering and sorrow, and turn them into a cause of joy 
here and h^eafter. I can only wish you and Mrs. Hill the support and 
blessing of the same almighty Friend, a resource of which you know by 
experience the value. I would be most kindly remembered to my friend 
Catherine, and to our friend John, when you write to him. My good 
wife’s wishes are to express her most friendly sympathy and kindest 
regard. Our boy is still in a delicate, precarious state, but rather a 
little, we hope, mending. I cannot urge you to write to me in the midst 
of so much care, and with all your diversified public business also press¬ 
ing on your time; you know what a welcome thing it will be to hear 
from you, whenever you can divert a little time and composure to such 
an occupation. Yours, with the greatest regard, 

J. Foster. 


CXXXV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, May, 1820. 

My dear Sir,— I will presume there is no need of professions to the 
effect that,.“ this long silence has in no degree partaken of forgetfulness, 
indifference,” &c.: no; it has been owing to a paralytic affection of my 
right hand,—an affection, however, which 1 never feel, but when I should 
take, or attempt to take, a pen. In such a case, there is some myste¬ 
rious arrest on its power ; but lay down or let alone the pen, and I should 
not be sensible that anything at all ails the limb. There are, neverthe¬ 
less, rare and unaccountable intervals of this peculiar disorder; and I 
seize one of them to make an essay at this sheet. 

The information respecting friend James has been, on the whole, more 
favorable than previous accounts had led me to fear the sequel was to 
prove. And I am indulging an assurance that the advancing fine season 
is every week bringing some small, but valuable and promising addition 
to his recovery toward health. Nothing, at the same time, but such a 
fatality as I have been lamenting would have prevented me from long 
since writing for information, and in acknowledgment of your last 
friendl}’', brief communication, as well as the preceding one. The enve¬ 
lope of the newspaper was legible but in part. I could make out that 
you still felt great anxiety respecting James ; and it so happened that 
some lines on the topic of laudations conferred on a certain “ Essay,” 
were as clearly visible as ever was Eallantyne’s typography, just as if 

VOL. II. 5 





50 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


an evil spirit had taken the trouble to preserve conspicuously the sen¬ 
tence adapted to cherish in me the evil principle of vanity. To be 
praised by “ heads of houses,” by college tutors, and by poets! do you 
not think it was worth while to take some pains in finishing the compo¬ 
sition,—that care of elaboration on which you have sometimes conde¬ 
scended to confer your rather scornful compassion ? As a set-olf, how¬ 
ever, tp sui^iTume of Arabia, there has not been, as far as I am aware 
(with the single exception of old friend the Eclectic), one word of notice 
in any of the hundred printed vehicles of contemporary criticism. You 
will believe me, I hope, that I have no manner of quarrel with any of 
them on this account. I am about beginning to try whether I can do 
another small piece of work for the same employers. They fancy that 
I have been at it for a considerable time; and I have been too much 

ashamed of my dilatoriness to undeceive them. 

I should like vastly to know the whole in and out of your Liverpool 
station; I mean as to how it accommodates itself to the dispositions, 
habits, tastes, and likings of Mr. and Mrs. Hiil. I have noticed how 
very taciturn you are on this whole subject. And my faith or presump¬ 
tion in the matter is inclined to coincide w’ith that of some of your Bristol 
friends; that is to say, that Mr. and Mrs. H. do not like Liverpool at all. 
They (the Bristol friends) are beginning (or they pretend so) to be look¬ 
ing forward toward the time when the solemn and inviolable laws of the 
“ Celestial Empire” (for the Methodists are the Chinese of the Christian 
tribes), will permit our old friends to take the other turn in the Bristol 
station. It is unfortunate, that you cannot come just at this juncture to 
preserve the perfect integrity of this province of that empire,—to prevent 
some threatened desertions across its sacred confine, perpetrated under 

the influence of the attraction of Broadmead. Mr.-, I am told, is 

renegade.Mrs. - told me lately, that much as she is sorry 

and reluctant to act in contravention to her worthy husband’s will, she 
shall often be a defaulter in ecclesiastical allegiance. . . . Hall appears 
to be highly satisfied, and even gratified, with his transfer. By degrees 
one has come to understand the combination of motives which determined 
him; no one of them being singly very strong, but the whole together 
rationally competent to account for and justify the measure. Excepting 
two or three Sundays occupied in preaching, I have heard him each 
Sunday evening, the evening being, I understand, generally the superior 
part of the day. And certainly, whatever it be in point of religious profit, 
it is a high intellectual luxury; though under a material deduction on 
account of the difficulty of hearing him. Besides the lowness and thick¬ 
ness of his voice, he does, I am sure, and many say the same, articulate 

more indistinctly than formerly.The place is kept full (often not 

violently crowded), by a very miscellaneous, and partly occasional influx 
from the Church, Methodists, Quakers, Independents, and no-kind; a iew 
Socinians to complete the compost. Several clergymen regularly; lately 
an archbishop; members of parliament over from the spiritual sojourn at 






LETTERS. 


51 


Bath; and so forth. As to the archbishop, I should affix the epithet 
Irish, or you will not believe me. Hall takes possession this week of his 
house ; one of a great number of newly built ones on the road, half a 
mile on this side Bristol: which house is, during the morning part of the 
day, to be defended against assault by (if found necessary), culverins, 
carronades, chevaux de frise, bull-dogs, and what not. But I predict, 
that there will not be found wanting British valor enough, not unfre- 
quently to dare and overcome all these means and modes of fortification 

and menace.Anderson (on easy terms with Hall for many years) 

will be far more of an intimate with him than any other man. He is a 
vastly acute and doggedly intellectual fellow, that Anderson, and is in¬ 
trepid enough not to have the slightest fear of the great man. I stand 
greatly in awe of him, but shall sometimes venture within reach of his 
talons, which are certainly of the royal tiger kind. ... He seems on the 
whole (for he has not escaped feelings of approaching infirmity, in addi¬ 
tion to his old and invincible complaint), in a state of health to promise 
many years; years it may be hoped of great and peculiar usefulness— 
peculiar, inasmuch as he will draw under his influence a large portion 
of the most intelligent part of the people about the place, especially of the 
class of young, inquisitive, educated folk, many of them apt to be proud 
or vain of their attainments, and liable to temptation on the side of Soci- 
nianism or scepticism. 


CXXXVI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

August 2, 1826. . 

My dear Sir, —At last I put an end to this procrastination, for which 
it is of no use to say, that I am sorry and ashamed. Nor would I pre¬ 
tend the smallest excuse from the circumstance of having been for a 
month past, and more, severely tasked with compulsory labor, for a tem¬ 
porary purpose, since a few sentences would have expressed my deep 
and sympathizing interest in your sorrows. But in truth I have wanted 
resolution. I have felt how impotent must be all testimonies of friendly 
concern in so mournful a juncture. I know that the divine Friend alone 
can be an effectual consoler, and his consolations I rejoiced in the cer¬ 
tainty that you enjoyed, and would still furtlier enjoy. 

About, I think, a month since, Mrs. F-^ kindly sent me a letter she 

had received from Mrs. Hill, which contained a most friendly reference 
to me. It was aflecting to contemplate that bright and interesting youth 
in the state of debility, prostration, and suffering which she described. 
But how much I rejoiced, and with feelings of congratulation to his afiec- 
tionate and sorrowing parents, at another part of [the letter] in which 
his piety, his patience, his entire resignation .... were so delightfully 
displayed. What inestimable consolation to his affectionate friends ! 
The letter showed his exhaustion to be so extreme, that I anticipated his 
almost immediate dismission from the scene of suffering, and felt some 







52 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


surprise at your letter which informed me he was still detained. And 1 
was exceedingly struck with the memorable circumstance of his pointed 
and solemn appeal and questions to his brother. Such an explicit mani¬ 
festation, such a prominence of Christian principle and faithfulness, was 
worthy of a spirit just ready for its flight into eternity—into he<aven. At 
the same time, it could not but be a pensi ve gratification to me, that any¬ 
thing of my writing should be implicated with this impulse of pious 
avowal, and zeal, and fraternal affection. You requested me to write. 
My dear sir, pardon me that I delayed, till the second letter with a black 
seal brought the evidence, that all your feelings would be for a while 
sacred to the dead and to heaven. 

I seem as if I could hardly believe it for a fact, that my animated young 
friend will be seen no more on earth. If I were at Little Haven, every 
spot would give back his image to my mind,'Wfith a frequent return of the 
suggestion, “ Will he not come ? Why is he not here ?” I can ima¬ 
gine that there would at moments be something almost like a prompting 
impulse to go and look for him, along the shore, or on the brow of the 
cliff*. How vivid is* my remembrance (it looks not like remembrance but 
presence),—of his elastic spirit, his illuminated look, his keen argument! 
in all which we seemed to foresee, in more advanced future years, a man 
of extraordinary and admirable intelligence, conspicuously superior to 
surrounding society, and, as we hoped, destined to be, somewhere or 
other, its light and benefactor. But the great Sovereign had a different 
appointment! And he who w^as your interesting associate, and so often 
mine, is now in the invisible world, and among the spirits of the just 
made perfect. That this was a wise and gracious appointment you are 
sure, amidst all the regrets which oppress your hearts, and for the present 
cast a shade over the whole scene of life. He who cannot err, and wLo 
could have bid him stay on earth, judged it better to say to him, “ Come 
up hitherand how happy that the youthful spirit was willing and pre¬ 
pared to go! And think how delightfully, how divinely complacent he 
is in the change ! Assuredly, if he might return, he would say, with 
heavenly emotion, “ No, my heavenly Father, no; not from thy presence, . 
for all the world below.” But you will feel irresistible assurance, that 
he thinks of you still, with sweet and never-dying affection, and antici¬ 
pates the time when you will go to meet him, where you will never more 
lose him. 

In Mrs. Hill’s letter, it was extremely gratifying to see the pious re¬ 
signation with which she was enabled to surrender to the Almighty the 
dear departing youth. I have often admired the calm fortitude of so 
gentle a spirit, and have thought how much cause she had to bless God 
for the possession of the supporting power of religion. That power I 
trust you will both effectually feel in this trying season. And also, that 
every consoling, and every salutary and instructive, influence will be 
granted to operate on the minds of my young friends, John and Cathe¬ 
rine. They have, perhaps, never before had placed before them so plain 


LETTERS. 


53 


and affecting a practical demonstration of the necessity and sacred 
efficacy of religion. 

With respect to your very kind invitation to Little Haven, I will just 
mention the state of the case. On account chiefly of John’s health, my 
dear wife has been with him, and the two younger at Lyme, on the south 
coast, this six or seven weeks, and I have never seen them all the while. 
.... For more than a month I have been in hard labor in writing a 
great deal in various shapes, about our academy, in the way of state¬ 
ments and applications sent to various quarters to promote its interest, 
&c., so that a number of other matters of labor have been thrown into 
grievous arrear, and require to be now attended to. Happily, my wife’s 
sister C. is with them, or it would have been imperative on me to visit 
them ; for the situation of things is but a mournful one. In one word, 
we have little reason to expect any other than a fatal termination of 
John’s long indisposition. It is decidedly consumption, and he is reduced 
to very great debility and emaciation, and has an ominous cough. He 
has been gradually growing worse during the last half year. My dear 
wife is a woman ot the most pensive feelings, though with all the forti¬ 
tude of reason, aided by religious thought. But I fear for her oppressed 
spirits. Now, my dear sir, the case being so, I feel that if I can leave 
home a week or two, it is to Lyme that I ought to go. They would feel 
there the claim, while regarding you with the very highest esteem, and 
taking, as my wife does, a very warm and sympathetic interest in your 
sorrows and loss. 


CXXXVII. TO THE REV. W. ANDERSON. 


1826. 

My DEAR Sir, —I was pleased to hear you say that you had not a 
Tacitus, of such an edition as to content you ; but vexed afterwards that 
I should then and there have said one syllable of intimation that you did 
not need purchase one—as being sensible, the next moment, it might 
look so much like an air of having such affluence of books as to be able 
to turn them to the effect of conferring favors and gratuities. In very 
truth it was said from the momentary eager impulse to prevent your 
doing what you said you were intending, that is, to procure a Tacitus. 
The idea of the instant was, that you might be turning in at Strong’s 
for that purpose, the first time that you should be going that way. 

There needs not one word be said about this second Brotier’s edition, 
edited by himself, with some additions to what was in his quarto, and at 
the same time some omissions of what he thought less essential. Seve¬ 
ral years since (though previously possessed of Val^y’s reprint), I was 
tempted by the known character and the beauty of this, together with the 
fairness of the copy. There was another indue ment:—I anticipated 
the heed of two good copies for the purpose of, pr bably, sometimes read¬ 
ing a book of Tacitus with the youth—who will soon read no more. I 




54 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


do not wish to retain in view what would be the constant memorial ol 
this vanity and fallacy of hope. 

It was with a melancholy sentiment that I lately took up-stairs and 
placed on the shelf a volume of Livy, a considerable part of which he had 
read with me during the earlier period of his fatal decline. I looked at 
the part bearing the marks of his liaving proceeded through it, and 
thought with deep pensiveness,—“ he will never more look on these 
passages and sentences.” 

The Tacitus, I observe, I have long since taken the pains to preserve 
fit for use without binding, by pasting thin boards on the sides, pasting a 
strip of strong cloth, and covering it, across each top and bottom, and 
writing the inscription on the back. I like extremely the foreign look 
of this sort of paper-outside. 

It may some time or other occur that a tolerable Latin Dictionary will 
be of opportune service to a student in the Academy, who may be ill 
able to afford the cost of the necessary books. Of three or four such 1 
can well spare one, which you will please to make this use of whenever 
you may be aware of the proper occasion. 

The Delphin Cresar, too, as not furnishing any such help as to favor 
indolence, and as not being in any great degree incorrect, may in some 
instance or other be worth putting in the hands of such a student. I 
observe I have Livie^s neatly printed Horace 12mo., but with no notes 
at all—if this should be a thing of any use, I can at any time put it in 
my pocket. Yours truly, J. Foster. 


CXXXVIII. TO HIS SON, 

[Written to him when at Lyme, about two months before his consumption ended in death, 
on the 5th of Oct., 1826. J. F.] 

My dear John,— For some weeks I have had the intention of writing 
you a letter, and have been afraid my so long omitting to do so would 
seem hardly kind. The prevention has been from a considerable quan¬ 
tity of other writing of a labored and tedious kind, together with many 
calls into society which I could not w^ell avoid. But I think of you every 
day and hour. There has not been much hereabouts worth telling you, 
more than what I have ij|£ntioned in the successive letters to your 
mother ; unless, indeed, it had been possible to convey the essence of the 
admirable sermons of Mr. Hall, which I have heard each Sunday eve¬ 
ning. It is the regret of all hearers that that essence, so noble, should 
go off, and as it v;ere expire, and be lost, like incense dissipated in the 
air ;—lost, that is4;o say, except as far as it is admitted and retained for 
salutary effect in the minds of some of those hearers. Whether it be 
so retained in any of them, is known only to themselves and the omni¬ 
scient Inspector. Last Sunday evening (the text being in Ecclesiastes, 
“ There is a /me for every purpose,” &c.), he made his conclusion, with 



LETTERS. 


55 


‘extreme energy, in urging on young persons the absolute necessity of an 
instant, earnest attention to their highest interests, witli perhaps ten re¬ 
petitions of the question, “Is it too soon ?” followed, in each sentence, 
with the most cogent and solemn representation w\iij it is not too soon. 
One could have wondered, while listening, how it was }X)ssibie that any 
of the young persons present, of‘anything approaching to mature years 
and understanding, could put aside at the time the force of the admo¬ 
nition, or go away and think no more of it. I wonder, my dear John, 
what you would have thought, and how you would have felt, if you had 
been there. He enforced that in season of health “ it is time,” that no 
time is to l)e lost;—with what augmented emphasis he might have added, 
that when health has given place to sickness, there is then, with still 
more pressing and invincible evidence, no time to be lost. 

My imagination is often with you, and the little compaii}'’, in your 
dwelling and its vicinity, which are so familiar to my mental view. The 
most conspicuous and favori^^e part, that is the Cobb, is now, I suppose, 
easily practicable as a little walk to any who are in possession of a little 
share of strength. At every thought of that, and of the more distant 
shore where the relics of unknown past ages so much abound, I am 
greatly sorry that you cannot repeat the little rambles thither which 
pleased you sq much last year. I regret to think how painfully you 
must feel the difference, especially when you observe the two younger 
associates capable of their former activity and amusement. You have to 
exercise patience in being content with what you can enjoy of the scene, 
under the restriction of your present weakness, by sitting on the beach, 
floating sometimes, it seems, on the sea in a boat, and looking from the 
windows on the great expanse, with often a beautiful sky and.horizon, a 
splendid sun-setting, and, some time since, the rising moon ; which last 
I never saw with a more beautiful and striking appearance than I remem¬ 
ber once at Lyme. 

It has been pleasing to hear of any degree of alleviation which you 
have seemed to feel of your disorder; and very glad should I have been 
to hear of a more decided amendment. It has been well, and to me at 
the same time wonderful, that the heat, oppressive to ail that I have met 
with except Dr. IMarshman, has been so much attempered to your feel- 
in o-s. I would hope its continuance will be favorable to your regaining 
some little increase of strength against the season which the now sensi¬ 
bly shortening days are beginning to signify we must be again looking for. 
You have to acknowledge it as a favor of Providence, that you are thus 
permitted to have the trial of the best expedient that could be recom¬ 
mended for arresting the progress of your disease, together with such 
constant alleviating attentions, cares, and exemptions, while an incompa¬ 
rably greater number, who are suffering under such debility, are at the 
same time in circumstances of hardship, deprivation, and want. Think 
of them, if you are sometimes tempted to murmur at your lot. But do 
not let your thoughts be coniined to the consideration of health, and the 


56 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


means and wishes for its recovery. I would earnestly and affection¬ 
ately press it upon you that there is a far superior concern requiring 
your attention. I have never written to you, I think, without reminding you 
of this. But in such former admonitions I was far from anticipating that 
the time would come so soon when suggestions of the most serious kind 
would acquire such new and, I may say, importunate force of application, 
from an extremely critical state of your health. By your invariable 
silence on this subject, and apparent care to avoid being brought into com¬ 
munication respecting it, I have always been left, and I believe your 
mother also, much in the dark as to what place it has held in your 
thoughts. I have feared to urge it upon you with formal, grave, and 
frequent repetition, lest such admonition should become repulsive to you, 
and so have the effect of making you disinclined to think or read on the 
subject. And knowing how much religious instruction, direct and in¬ 
direct,.has mingled through the wdiole course of your education, and 
being certain, therefore, that you must necessarily have much information 
on the subject, I have been willing to hope that you did sometimes think 
of it seriously, though reluctant to speak of it. How could I when you 
had so much knowledge, and when your mental faculties were advancing 
toward maturity,—how could I do otherwise than hope that you must be 
sensible what is the grand dictate'of reason, of wisdom, of good sense; 
and were secretly giving some real attention to the greatest concern of 
existence ? And if you did it in a measure when in health, I may surely 
hope that you do it still more'seriously now. For, my dear John, you can 
hardly be unaware that your situation is. exceedingly precarious, not only 
as to the recovery of health, but as to life itself. Your friends would not 
willingly, in your state of weakness and languor, distress you with pre¬ 
sages ; but it h proper you should be unequivocally apprised that the 
case is one of great danger, while it is a well-known fact that the disorder 
is peculiarly deceptive to the patients themselves, as to their anticipations 
of the issue. 

What then, rny dear boy, is your most evident, most demonstrative, 
duty and interest ? Is there not an irresistible appeal to your reason 
and conscience? The voice of your heavenly Father himself speaks to 
you. ‘ Surely you will not be inattentive to his admonitions and merciful 
invitations. Can the voice of the kindest human friend, or the voice 
from heaven itself, express to you a kinder or wiser sentence, than that 
you should apply yourself with all earnestness to secure the true felicity 
—the only real and substantial felicity on earth, supposing your life 
should be prolonged,—the supreme felicity of a better world, if the sove¬ 
reign Disposer has appointed that your life shall be short. 

Do not allow your thoughts to recoil from the subject as too solemn, 
too gloomy a one. If it were the gloomiest in the world, if it were no¬ 
thing hut gloomy, it is yet absolutely necessary to be admitted, and dwelt 
upon in all its importance. What would be gained, my dear John, and 
oh. what may be lost! by avoiding it, turning the thoughts from it, and 


LETTERS. 


57 


trying not to look at it ? Will the not thinking of it make it cease to be 
urgently and infinitely important? Will the declining to think of it 
secure the safety of the momentous interests involved in it ? But why 
should the subject be gloomy ? Is it a sad and melancholy thing to seek 
earnestly the favor and beneficence of God ? Is it a miserable employ¬ 
ment to seek his pardoning mercy in the name of Jesus Christ ? Is it a 
mournful exercise to seek to have the mind brought into the right state, 
in all respects, towards God, and religion, and futurity, and heaven ? Can 
it be a gloomy thing to seek a deliverance from the very gloom itself 
which naturally accompanies our ideas of death, so that we should come 
to exult in the thought and anticipation of an endless life ? If there he 
gloom in the subject, you plainly see there is no way to escape it but by 
either, on the one hand, hardening the mind to an invincible thoughtless¬ 
ness, which leads to the most fatal consequences, or, on the other hand, 
a linn and pious resolution fully to meet that gloominess, and seek the 
divine assistance to pass through it, to overcome it, and attain a state of 
hope and consolation. 

This was done by James Hill, of whose decease your mother has per¬ 
haps informed you. He was just your own age, within some very few 
weeks; and a year or two since had the most flattering prospects of life 
and distinction before him. He was not then insensible to the claims of 
religion, but did not yield his attention to them in the degree that he 
subsequently felt, with the deepest conviction, that he ought to have 
done. But his protracted illness (a slow consumption) was a salutary 
discipline to bring him to the most earnest concern for his immortal 
welfare ; he sought the divine mercy, believing in the many promises 
that none shall truly, humbly, and perseveringly, through Jesus Christ, 
seek it in vain. He obtained a happy confidence in that mercy, and was 
perfectly resigned to the sovereign will for life or death. 

Do not, my dear John, doubt that your prayers also will be graciously 
heard. We shall not cease to pray for you ; but the great, the indis- 
pensable thing is, that you pray for. yourself. It must be your own 
serious and persevering effort. And is it not a supremely valuable and 
happy resource ? Think of being permitted and invited to make your 
petitions to the almighty Father, the God of all grace! And think, 
deeply and deliberately, of your situation, in body and spirit, to judge 
what you have to request of him. Such reflection will show you plainly 
what is of infinitely the greatest importance to you. Make that, above 
all, the subject of an humble and hopeful importunity. Do so, my dear 
John, and then you will be happy, whether your life shall be prolonged, 
or prematurely brought to a conclusion. 

Your affectionate father, J. Foster. 


CXXXIX. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, Aug. 29, 1826. 

. ... In one point I have a principle of consolation, real, and I think 



58 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


surely rational, though indeed of a gloomy kind. I may have alluded tc 
it in some former letter. It is, that I constantly and systematically re¬ 
gard this world with such horror, as a place for the rising- human beings 
to come into, that it is an emphatical satisfaction, I may say pleasure, to 
me (except in a few cases of rare promise), to hear of their prematurely 
leaving it. I have innumerable times been amazed that parents should 
not, in this view, be greatly consoled in their loss. Let them look at 
this world! with sin, temptations, snares of the devil, bad examples, 
seducing companions, disasters, vexations, dishonors, and afflictions, all 
over it; and their children to enter the scene with a radically corrupt 
nature, adapted to receive the mischief of all its worst influences and 
impressions ; let them look at all this, and then say, deliberately, whether 
it be not well that their children are saved these dreadful dangers ! Let 
them behold what the vast majority of children do actually become— have 
actually become, in mature life;—many of them, millions of them ! de¬ 
cidedly bad and wretched, and causes of wdiat is bad and wretched 
around them; and, short of this worst event, an immense majority of 
them careless of religion, salvation, eternity ! I repeat, let them look at 
all this, and then ask themselves, whether it be not a vain presumption 
that exactly their children, nay, every parent in his turn, my children, 
are sure to be exceptions. Alas, how many even 'pious parents have 
cause (humanly speaking) to wish their children had never been born, 
or that they had died in their infancy! How often are they doomed to 
the sadness of seeing that the effect of all their cares of teaching and 
discipline, all they have done to warn and fortify them, is lost and de¬ 
stroyed in one short year, or even month, under the influence of the bad 
companionship, or the unfortunate situations, into which they fall. Sup¬ 
posing such a consequence could, in the infancy of such children, have 
been foreseen as probable, except prevented ])y a premature death, how 
absurd would have been the very aflection of the parents which would 
have preferred their children’s living for such a fearful hazard, to their 
being removed to eternal safety in their childhood or early youth! The 
exception to this state of the account is where, at a very early age, there 
are the most decided evidences of piety (if the parents are firmly per¬ 
suaded that real piety once kindled in the soul will never be suflered to 
be extinguished), and especially when this piety is associated with such 
mental powers as to promise eminent excellence and usefulness. But in 
some instances, this piety itself seems to he created under the instrumentality 
of sickness and impending death. So that the aftectionate parent seems 
to hear a voice from heaven saying, You shall not see your beloved child 
a child of God, hut at the cost of losing him. The instance of Mrs. 
Saunders’s daughter cannot but be fresh in my memory. And I believe 
that most pious and affectionately devoted mother, amidst the deep and 
pensive regrets of memory, does sometimes, nay, very often, feel exalta¬ 
tion in the loss of her rare and admirable child. As if she should say, 
“ I have lost her; but through the very dispensation by which she waa 


LETTERS. 


69 


taken away, she became that which I shall one day feel inexpressible 
joy to meet again. By such a loss how much I have gained, which 
(humanly speaking) I might not liave gained, but at the cost of losing 
her.”—And that dear James, so bright and interesting, the object of so 
many hopes, so admirably vigorous and premature in intellect, was not 
he in a measure an example under the same predicament ? Was not 
the decided piety which brightened the termination of his life, and is so 
blessed a consolation to you in the. mournful deprivation—was not this 
piety a star which rose in the darkness of liis long affliction ? He was 
to become decidedly devoted to God, and then he was to die for it! But 
to have died, is better than to have advanced forward into life in an 
undetermined state of mind with respect to the supreme concern of life, 
to be thrown into all the temptations of the world, without the sovereign 
principle fixed in the soul. It is not that I am in the least doubting that 
James had serious thoughts and conscience of religion ; but the decided, 
the absolute devotion to God, was not that heavenly gift imparted during, 
and through the instrumental operation of, his sensible transition toward 
another world ? . . . . 


CXL. TO JOHN BULLAR, ESQ. 

Stapleton, Sept, 20, 1826. 

My dear Sir,—1 am too well assured of your benevolence to doulit 
that you have sometimes a friendly recollection of your former pupil 
John. It is at his wish, quite spontaneously expressed, that I trouble 
you with a few lines. ^ 

.... A day or two since he asked me, whether I had, at any time, lat¬ 
terly, heard from you ; and said, it would be a satisfaction to him if I would 
write to you, to express his grateful remembrance and respect, and his 
regret for not having more fully, at all times, improved his advantages un¬ 
der your instruction, and for any cause of disapprobation and dissatisfac¬ 
tion which he had in any instance given you. I felt it necessary to promise 
to do so ; and trust you will feel that I have, in this his wish and request, 
an adequate apology for troubling you, amidst your many labors and 
cares, with this brief account of circumstances, so interesting in our 
own little secluded family. I hesitate whether I have any right to say 
one word more : if I had a right what I would say would be, that if, in 
any fraction of an hour, you could afford your friendly attention for 
writing two or three sentences, they would be, I know, very greatly 
acceptable to John; at the same time I would pointedly say, that this is 
nothing of the nature of a claim, and that we shall not be the less 
assured of your kind wishes, though your constant and laborious opera¬ 
tions prevent your doing it. 

I remain, my dear Sir, Yours^ 

With very great respect and esteem, 

J. Foster. 




60 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CXLI. TO JOHN BULLAR, ESQ. 

Stapleton, Oct. 9, 1826. 

. My dear Sir, —I have to thank you in John’s name and my owm, for 
your very kind letter to him and me : it was very acceptable and grati¬ 
fying to him; but he is now no longer a subject of advice and con¬ 
solation. 

About the time of his receiving that letter, the progress of his illness 
was apparently so slow, that it appeared probable he might still survive 
a number of weeks ; and when, eight or nine days since, he rather sud¬ 
denly became very sensibly worse, it was deemed to be some eftect of 
indigestion, the stress of which might be transient ; but it proved to be 
(according to what he since mentioned to have been at the time his own. 
conviction) the final stage and acceleration of the malady. By the 
middle of last week his little remaining strength was evidently vanishing 
very fast, all relish for any kind of food was gone, and he felt a sense of 
illness and insupportable weariness through his whole frame. But he 
uttered no word of murmur, but expressed his resignation to the divine 
disposal, yet with great anxiety that his severely tried patience might 
not fail: but he expressed an earnest desire for the hour of deliverance. 
On the Thursday forenoon he said to me, with a peculiar and affecting 
emphasis, “ I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, and is not 
that far better ?” 

A friendly and religious physician, who was with him repeatedly that 
day, having given an inexplicit answer to his inquiry, how long it was 
^probable he might live, he interrogated me with an earnest look and 
tone, as to what the physician might have said to myself after leaving 
the room ; and was soothed by my telling him, that the time would cer¬ 
tainly be very short. We did not, however, apprehend that the hour 
was quite so near at hand. 

It was not, therefore, without some small degree of surprise, that, at 
seven or eight o’clock in the evening, we perceived it evident that he 
was sinking very fast. His three or four immediate relatives, the phy¬ 
sician, and the old affectionate servants, were assembled in the room, and 
he spoke continuously for a considerable time, with apparently little dif¬ 
ficulty of utterance, and with the most perfect composure and command 
of mind and language ; addressing or adverting to each of us, expressing 
a grateful sense of the kindn^s he had experienced; his request to be 
forgiven anything in which he had ever been blameable towards any of 
us ; his wish, that each one might receive one more religious admonition 
from his death ; his trust that we shall all meet again in a happier 
world ; and his hope in the divine mercy through Jesus Christ, that he 
was going to that happier world. There was some strange character 
of dignity in his manner and language, such as I had never seen him 
exemplify till his last illness, and especially in these last hours ; so that 
I was, on subsequent reflection, reminded of what was said of I forget 


LETTERS. 


61 


whom, that “ nothing in his life ever became him so well as his going 
out of it.”* At short intervals he spoke frequently during the advancing 
hours, expressing his calm hope—his confidence, but with the pensive 
expression, several times, of a wish that he might have felt more ani¬ 
mated and delightful emotions. “ I want,” he said, “ that He would lift 
up the light of his countenance more clearly upon me.” I said to him, 
that this was not essential to the solidity of the last consolatioi^s. The 
last complete sentence, I think, that he uttered was, “ I know that my 
Redeemer liveth.” He retained his consciousness and his ability to 
reply, with intelligent, significant monosyllables and signs, till within the 
last hour, in the latter part of which he fell asleep, and it was not cer¬ 
tain that he ever really awaked. His final breath was distinctly percepti¬ 
ble, and was followed at an interval by a struggle of the oppressed lungs, 
to inhale once more ; but I felt sure that this was only mechanical, and that 

he suffered no pain.His suffering frame was, except in the face, 

exhausted and attenuated to a mere skeleton. In looking on the deserted 
countenance, through which mind and thought had so recently, but, as it 
were, a few minutes before, emanated, I felt what profound mystery there 
was in the change. What is it that is gone ? What is it now ? 
During the last stage of his illness (since his return from the sea), he 
has seemed a strangely different person from what he had been before ; 
it has looked as if a latent, unsuspected character were developed. His 
former habitual, systematic, invincible reserve, seemed to have left him, 
and without any effort of his to overcome it. He would easily and 
freely talk on religion, himself, death, hereafter ; subjects on which it 
was heretofore impossible, in any way, to draw him into communication ; 
and, at the same time, with a degree of maturity and compass of 
thought, w'hich I had never attributed to him. In truth, I have never, 
but in his very early years, and in this short concluding season, fairly 
had the means of knowing the nature and extent of the operations of his 
mind ; that unfortunate and continual reserve having placed me and kept 
me in a state of estrangement often painful, and sometimes creating a 
displacency, which, I believe, has made me deficient in kindness to him. 
I was promising myself, that, as his mind advanced towards maturity, it 
would, at length, come out in a manner to produce a more free and satis¬ 
factory intercourse. I now deem it probable, that even before his long 
indisposition, or at least during the earlier stages of it, there was much 
more of the visiting of serious thoughts than there were the external 
signs of. At the same time I fully believe, that the real ultimate jwe- 
valence of such thoughts inhis mind was caused through a gracious 

* “ I have spoke 

With one that saw him die; who did report 
That very frankly he confessed bis treasons, 

Implored your highness’ pardon; and set lorth 
A deep repentance; nothing in his life 
Became him like the leaving it” 

Macbeth, Act i., Scene 4. 


62 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


influence of Heaven, by the augmenting illness, which grjidually brought 
upon_him the conviction, that his stay on earth was approaching to a 
close. I think it probable, that his mind must have been occupied with 
the most serious subjects even before he came to that decided conviction : 
for the state of his sentiments when he became communicative, about 
two months since, appeared to me such as must have been preceded by a 
process not very short. 

Thus there is a termination of all the cares, solicitudes, and apprehen¬ 
sive anticipations, concerning our son and your pupil. He is saved from 
entering on a scene of infinite corruptions, temptations and grievances ; 
and borne, I trust, to that happy region where he can no more sin, 
suffer, or die ; safe, and pure, and happy for ever. In such a view and 
confidence, I am (and my wife too, though for the present more painfully 
affected) more than resigned to the dispensation ; the consolation greatly 
exceeds the grief. 

Indeed, I believe, that to me, the consolatory considerations have much 
less to combat with than in the case of parents in general. Probably I 
may before have expressed to you, that I have such a horror of this 
world, as a scene for young persons to be cast and hazarded into, that 
habitually, and with a strong and pointed sentiment, I congratulate 
children and young persons on being intercepted by death at the entrance 
into it, except in a few particular instances of extraordinary promise for 

piety, talent, and usefulness.If, as in our case, parents see their 

children, in an early period of life, visited by a dispensation, which, in 
one and the same act, raises them to piety and dooms them to die, so that 
they receive an immortal blessing at the price of death ;—oh ! methinks it is 
a cheap cost, both to them and to those who lose them! In one of my 
first conversations with John, on his irrecoverable situation, when I said, 
“ We shall be very sorry to lose you, John,” he calmly and affectionately 
replied, “ You will not be sorry, if you have cause to believe that I am 
beyond all sorrow.” 

While I was writing the above, yesterda}^, your kind letter came to 
hand. We are most truly grateful to you for the deep and friendly 
interest you have taken in John’s welfare, and now take in our mourning for 
his departure. He was very cordially gratified by your letter, both for 
the kind personal regard, and the religioi)s suggestions and consolations 
which it conveyed. I can perfectly enter into your feelings respecting 
the dispersion of your children. This has always appeared to me one of 
the most melancholy circumstances in life. In my own case, I have 
anticipated it as a grievous circumstance, on supposition I should live 
long enough to experience it. But I hope you will have the satisfac¬ 
tion of seeing and hearing that your children prosper in temporal 
interests ; and God grant them and you, that they may, above all, prosper 
in the infinitely more important ones. 

I am, my dear Sir, yours, 

With the highest respect and esteem, 

J. Foster. 



LETTERS. . 


63 


CXLII. TO. MRS. SAUNDERS. 

. Stapleto7i, 1826. 

My DEAR IMadam,— Your very kind letter could not fail to be ex¬ 
tremely welcome. Most truly you have been taught to understand to 
the utmost the feelings which are caused by such an event. But it has 
been granted to you to enjoy the most animating consolations; and we 
have to thank the Almighty that such consolations are granted io 
us also. 

Though the final hour of the late dear youth did arrive considerably 
sooner than, some vveeks since, we had expected, the event itself had, 

• for four or five months, been regarded as inevitable. Before he went to 
the sea, at Midsummer, a judicious and pious physician (a relative of 
ours) plainly signified that the symptoms were of the most decisive 
character, and that he advised the* expedient rather because it might 

* afterwards be a subject of painful reflection not to have tried it, than 
from viy hope that this or any other means could be efficacious. lie 
returned very evidently feeble, more emaciated, and suffering more than 
at the time he went. Had he stayed but a few days longer, his return 
would have been impracticable, which would have been a distressing 
and melancholy circumstance. His decline was so sensibly progressive, 
that after a very ’short time he was confined entirely to his bed. 

With a small exception of those very slight faults (very slight in his 
case), so naturally incident to youth, his conduct had always been good. 
But we remained painfully in doubt respecting that deeper interest of 
the soul. And a Ijabitual reserve of character, beyond any instance I 
have ever known, had always made it impossible to bring him to any 
satisfactory communication on the subject. Before his return from the 
coast, it was strongly intimated to him, rather than plainly and pointedly 
declared, that the malady was decidedly fatal. But even this, which he 
received with perfect calmness, did not draw him into any disclosure of 
his silent thoughts. A short time after his return home, I felt it my 
painful duty, and reproached myself for having so long deferred it, to 
inform him in the most express terms, with a view to the great subject 
of religion and eternity, that his life was infallibly drawing to a close. 
1 never shall forget the delight, not unmingled with a degree of surprise, 
which was caused by his reply. 

With the most entire calmness, and easy simplicity of manner, he 
said he had for a good while past been convinced in his own mind that 
he could not recover; that his thoughts had been deeply exercised with 
his solemn prospects, and that he had an humble hope in the divine 
mercy. He talked with perfect freedom ; liis long and invincible reserve 
seemed to have left him all at once, without an effort; and it appeared 
as if a new, or hitherto latent character were suddenly developed before 
me. He expressed a tranquil resignation to the divine disposal, and a 
willingness to yield up his life ; only a wish that if it should so please 
God, there might be permitted him a little protraction of the remaining 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


()4 

period f(^r preparation; but this with submission. Neither then, nor at 
any subsequent moment, did lie betray any regret at his irrecoverable 
situation,—any clinging to life, or reluctance to surrender it. 

Through the succeeding weeks his mind remained in the same peace¬ 
ful state, while he was sensible that at the end of each few days his 
little feeble strength was still more diminished. And this peace was 
founded avowedly on the merits of Christ alone. His expressions of 
hope were sometimes mingled with self-condemning recollections af 
negligence and sin. 

His decline was very gradual till within about a week of the end. 
He did not sutfer all the distressing symptoms of the disease : but had 
enough for the exercise of patience, in laborious short breathing, cough, 
and oppressive debility and languor. These were greatly aggravated in 
the concluding week, and in the l'4.st few days he complained of an 
almost insupportable illness and weariness throughout his whole frame. * 
But he never uttered a murmur at the severe discipline ; fearfully soli¬ 
citous, however, sometimes lest his patience should fail under tlie trial. 
The last day but one he took great interest in a conversation respecting 
the probable manner of the future separate state of existence. His 
longing for the final deliverance became very earnest, especially in the 
last day; which we did not, however, at the beginning of it, by any 
means expect to be the last. 

About eight o’clock he was so evidently sinking fast, that we were 
drawn (four of us, and the two old faithful servants) into his room. He 
then spoke a considerable time continuously, with wonderful composure, 
and clearness of thought and language. . . . He was sensible till within 
the very last hour. When I thought his mind was finally withdrawn 
from us, and his eyes finally closed, I touched his face, and spoke to 
him, and he instantly looked up, and with evident intelligence spoke one 
word in reply ; and a few moments after, looking at his mother, he, in 
an affectionate tone, said, “ Mamma!” the last word he uttered. A 
little afterwards he sunk into sleep, and, as far as could be discerned, 
passed from sleep into death; I believe without any sense of suffering. 
There was a perfectly distinct last breath, followed, at an interval, by 
several ineffectual efforts of the oppressed lungs to inhale yet once 
more; but I felt sure, from the perfect quietness of his countenance and 
his frame, that this was no more than a mechanical action of the sub¬ 
siding principle of life. We have seen his pale and insensible form 
now for the last time ; for while I haye been writing this account, the 
lid of the coffin has been fastened down. 

The previous and commencing' operations of religion on his mind 
can now never be certainly known in this world. But as in the case of 
that ever dear young friend (Sarah Saunders), the memory of whom 
can never fade, so I believe in this instance too, that long illness, grow¬ 
ing into a settled anticipation of approaching death, was made the in¬ 
strumental discipline for bringing the soul effectually and decidedly to 



LETTERS. 


65 


God. Thus our two dear young relatives had the noblest, best gifts 
under the sun conferred upon them at the cost of life ! It was Heaven's 
gracious will that they should attain to the soul’s true welfare ; but they 
were to die for it! And, my dear madam, was not this a cheap cost of 
so divine an attainment ? Could we for the world wish them back in 
a state of the most vigorous health, hut loiihout that which they gained 
in the very process of losing it ? No! no 1 In beholding this world, 
overspread with all manner of evil, and thinking of the fearful hazard 
of young persons entering upon it, to pursue their course through it, 
what an animating consolation is it to see these tioo by a sovereign act 
of the great Disposer, carried at once beyond the entire sphere of evil, 
and secured safe and happy for ever! .... My dear wife feels the full 
value of this consolation, while the separation more painfully affects, for 
the present, her extreme sensibility, rendered, as it is, more pensive and 
deep by habitual feeble health. 


VOL. II. 


0 


66 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE SERAMFORE CONTROVERSY-MR. HALl’s SETTLEMENT IN BRISTOL 

-dissenters’ ORDINATION-CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION-THE RE¬ 
FORM BILL. 

1S-27-1S32. 

Mr. P'osrER's mental structure and habits obviously led him 
rather to *be a meditative observer of human life and character, 
than to engage with ardor in practical concerns. Technical 
punctilios and formalities were his aversion ; and it costs no effort 
to believe, that he never had the least curiosity to inquire into 
the official affairs of societies and committees.”* In one important 
instance, however, he was not satisfied with being a “ quiet 
looker-on,” but maintained a course of strenuous exertion on be¬ 
half of what he deemed to be a meritorious cause, when he saw it 
exposed to desertion and obloquy. “ I am afraid,” he said to a 
friend in 1826, “ we most amiable and liberal-minded Baptists 
shall be getting into something like war about the matters relating 
to Serampore.” To persons familiar with the proceedings of re¬ 
ligious institutions in tlic present day, an allusion will readily be 
understood to be h.ere made to the differences that arose after Mr. 
Fuller’s death (in 1815), between the Serampore missionaries 
(Carey, Marshman, and Ward), and the committee of the Baptist 
Missionary Society, and issued in their acting for some time as 
separate bodies. It was not till Dr. Marshman’s arrival in Eng¬ 
land, in 1826, that Mr. Foster took a particular interest in the 
business. Previously,*!* according to his own candid avowal, he 
})ad shared in the prejudices that had been gradually prevailing 
against this member of the Serampore fraternity, and which had 
implicated, also, the character of the whole union. But the state- 
ihents and explanations made by Dr. Marshman, convinced him 
that these prejudices were mostly founded on gross misrepresenta¬ 
tions. This conviction was subsequently corroborated during Dr. 

* Missionary Discourse, p. 49U 

+ Introductory Observations to Dr. Marshman’s Statement, p. viii. 


THE SERAMPORE CONTROVERSY. 


67 


M.’s sojourn under Mr. Foster’s roof, which afforded ample oppor¬ 
tunity for estimating his character, and of .acquiring by the most 
free and unceremonious canvassing, a clear understanding of the 
facts (both leading and subordinate) of the case. Besides writing 
an introduction of seventy pages to Dr. Marshman’s Statement;” 
Foster maintained an extensive correspondence on the subject, for 
the purpose of correcting erroneous impressions, or soliciting pe- 
cuniary aid.* In private intercourse with his friends, Seramporo 
formed the principal topic of conversation, and with those among 
them whose views differed from his own, he held frequent and 
protracted debates. 

If any explanation be thought necessary for thus noticing an 
occurrence on every account so much to be regretted, it may be 
observed, that the part taken by Mr. Foster was too decided and 
prominent to be passed over in silence ; and there is good reason 
for believing, that he would have deemed it simply an act of jus¬ 
tice to record in this memoir, his deliberate judgment in favor of 
men, whom he regarded (and whom posterity will regard) as 
among the mo.st illustrious examples of Christian self-devotement. 
In writing to his early associate and friend, Mr. Fawcett, he says, 
“I must think I am tolerably informed on that matter; for Dr. 
M. has been five or six weeks under this roof, as the most quiet 
seclusion he could find, while preparing for the press a work in 
explanation and vindication. I had seen a great deal of him be¬ 
fore the daily communications of the recent weeks, during which 
I have become acquainted, I think, with all that is material in the 
state of the case. I have heard, I believe, from one quarter and 
another, including the papers in the magazines, most of what is 
said, or can be said, on the other side. All manner of questions, 
hundreds of them, have been put to him, without the least reserve, 
down to the most minute circumstances, and he is quite freely 
communicative in all things whatever. After this I should not 
think it worth while to answer any one who should tell me, that I 
am imposed on by Dr. M.’s artifice, evasion, &c. But he has no 
such quality about him, and he needs no craft or concealment; 
for I believe there is not in Christendom a man more highly and 
uniformly conscientious, a man more anxiously and scrupulously 
solicitous to do right in all things. I have no doubt, that you will 

* “ About the Serampore business I have elaborately written, chiefly for 
private communication and representation, east, west, north, and south, as 
much as would, I am sure, make a large quarto volume in the modern style 
of printing.”—Tb the Editor, July 18, 1832 


68 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


be in a great degree of the same opinion, after you shall have 
read his next publication ; but no representations in writing, in 
which a vast number of illustrative and confirmatory small par¬ 
ticulars must necessarily be left out, can give the impression so 
completely as the intimate personal intercourse during many 
scores of hours, in which all the characteristic minutiae, down to 
the very smallest details of the course of conduct, are naturally 
and inevitably brought in sight and discussion. There has not 
been, I am confident, one singular particular, of the very smallest 
importance in the Serampore system, or in Dr. M.’s own conduct, 
that has not been freely talked over, while he has been in this 
house. Many things he has mentioned, which, he has observed in 
the particular instances, he had never thought of mentioning, or 
had never deemed worth mentioning to any other person. And 
judging from this ample and minute disclosure, challenged and 
questioned, and traversed at every point, and with a constant re¬ 
ference to all the animadversions circulated in report and in 
print—^judging upon this large and criticised explanation, I am 
convinced, that the whole system and couduct at Serampore (and 
of Marshman, quite as much as of Carey and Ward) has exhibited 
a completeness of devotement, an exclusion of selfish purposes, an 
unanimity of co-operation, a simplicity of object, and an indefa¬ 
tigable industry, of which there is no equal or second example (in 
an associated company of persons) in these times ; and to which 
there has been hardly a superior in any other times. ... In 
short, never were mortal men devoted throughout, with more dis- , 
interested singleness of purpose, to a noble object. Mrs. Marsh- i 
man has co-operated in completely the same spirit; and with very 
great pecuniary efiiciency. And John Marshman .... has acted 
most generously and magnanimously. As early as the age of 
seventeen, he had opportunities and overtures for going into 
courses for making a fortune, which by this time he would have 
done, with less indefatigable exertion than he has devoted to the 
Christian service, to which he has wholly given another seventeen 
years or nearly so, and is now worth nothing.”* 

' “ It is of no use to make professions of impartiality. That indeed was 
not the state of mind in which I began to give a somev\foat particular atten¬ 
tion to the subject; as I have said near the beginning of these pages, that I 
was very considerably prejudiced against Dr.^M. till his free explanations 
on all points in question, led me to a conviction that gross calumny, that 
wanton and extravagant falsehood, was at work against him. It will be 
said, of course, that this went into a violent prejudice on the other side. I 
have to answer, that it was not, at any rate, such as to make me refuse at- 




THE SETTLEMENT OF MR. HALL., 


69 


Other passages in Foster’s correspondence will show, tliat the 
high estimate he formed of Dr. Marshman, as a Christian and a 
missionary, was not influenced by any remarkable congeniality in 
their general mental habits and tastes, for in these tiiey widely 
differed ; it will also appear, that though his convictions in favor 
of the Serampore fraternity, as to the noble and disinterested spirit 
that animated them, and their strong claims on the gratitude and 
support of the Christian public, remained unshaken to the last, he 
candidly allowed, that on some points his opinions were somewhat 
modified by the opposing statements. In 1837, a reunion was 
effected with the Baptist Pvlissionary Society, a measure in which 
he did not acquiesce, though it relieved him from a very consider¬ 
able expenditure of time and labor. 

A great accession was made to Mr. Foster’s resources of social 
enjoyment by the settlement of the Rev. W. Anderson in Bristol, 
as classical and mathematical tutor of the Baptist College, in 
1825 ; and soon after, by the return of Mr. Hall to spend his last 
years in the scene of his early ministry. With the former his in¬ 
tention to other statements or evidence. I listened to multifarions testi¬ 
mony and opinion against him, given with whatever force it could derive 
from the knowledge and acuteness of some of his most decided and able ac¬ 
cusers.In addition, I have seen a considerable number of private docu¬ 

ments. The circumstances which happened to render my habitation the 
most convenient retirement for Dr M., while digesting his statement, have 
brought me acquainted with very many particulars and developments 
relating to its subject, and with the character of the man himself. If any 
one should say that I have been beguiled by polite dexterity and insinuating 
addre.ss, I should think it needless to make any other observation than that, 
whoever he may be that says so, he would make rather light of any one’s 
opinion who should say that he could be duped in his judgment of the cha¬ 
racter of any man, with whom he should pass several months in daily and 
familiar intercourse, though it were Prince Metternich himself. Let due 
praise then be rendered to the modesty of such as, with very slight, or 
without the smallest, personal acquaintance with Dr. M., shall have an 
agreeable sense of infallibility in asserting that the judgment of one so inti¬ 
mately conversant with him is deluded.Having in consequence of the 

local circumstances which brought me so directly in his way, been led to 
take an inquisitive interest in the concern in which he is involved, and 
having seen no appearance of a sustained and boldly uncompromising effort 
to assert his vindication, I have been induced by love of justice to do what 
I could in the capacity of advocate. What other motive can be ascribed or 
conceived for diverting so much time and attention from occupations for 
which they were greatly wanted ? From what other motive could I be 
willing to incur, and that from persons with not one of whom I have ever 
had any manner of disagreement, a share, as I must submit to expect, of the 
animosity wdiich will continue in action for a time against a man and a fra¬ 
ternity who were so long heretofore, and will remain ultimately and per¬ 
manently hereafter, approved, admired, and revered ?”—Introductory Ob- 
S€Tvatio7is to a Statement relative to Serampore, supplementary to a “ Brief 
Memoir,” by J. Marshman, D.D., London, 1S2S, pp. Ixix—Ixxi. 


70 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


tercourse was frequent and cordial. As to Mr. Hall, Foster’s let¬ 
ters abound witli intimations of the \dvid interest he took in the 
discourses and conversation of his great coeval.* Notwithstand¬ 
ing their difference of opinion on the Serampore question, they 
were often in each other’s society, and would have met much 
more frequently, had not Mr. Foster’s state of health, and his dis¬ 
tance from the city, prevented. It has been remarked, and appa¬ 
rently with truth, that the social circle was resorted to by Mr. 
Hall (in his later years at least), as a soothing relaxation, in which 
old associations and the scenes of past life were the favorite topics. 
Foster, on the other hand, valued it, thougli not exclusively, as a 
means of mental excitement, and enjoyed (unless physically dis¬ 
abled) “ a long stout evening’s talk,” in which was duly inter¬ 
mingled the “ animated No.” On the occasion of Mr. Hall’s de¬ 
cease, no one had a deeper sense than Mr. Foster of the irreparable 
loss sustained by that event; it was “ a sense,” to use his own 
expressive language, “ of privation partaking of desolateness.” 
“ That memory,” he said, “ will never vanish from the minds of 
those who have heard his preaching, and frequently his conversa¬ 
tion, during the five years that he has been resident here. As a 
preacher his like or equal will come no more.”j' “ The chasm 
he has left can never be filled. The thing to be deplored is, that 
he did not fill a space which he was beyond all men qualified to 
occupy in our religious literature. It is with deep regret one 
thinks what an inestimable possession for our more cultivated, and 
our rising intelligent young people, would have been some six or 
ten volumes of his sermons.”:}: Instead of the funeral sermon 
which he declined (being under medical interdict at the time from 
all public speaking), he paid in his “ Observations on Mr. Hall as 

* “ Hall is still in our sort of circle the great primary object, to talk of 
and to hear talk, whether in his public or private positions. The progress 
of time but augments the evidence of the eminent value of our acquisition 
in Anderson, whether as tutor or conversational associate. He is your man 
all round. He is more intimate than any one else is with Hall, and mea¬ 
sures his talents and qualities with mathematical precision.— To B. Stoke.<i, 
Esq., June 11, 1827. 

“ Hall is supporting his uniform tenor of admirable preaching with a 
measure of usefulness, which, however, he sometimes regrets not to see 
more evident and direct. And one may justly wonder it should not partake 
more of the extraordinary, considering the superlative excellence of the 
ministration. But it will, it certainly 7nust, have a most important effect 
on the rising race of educated and inquiring persons .”—To the Rev. T. 
Coles, Jday 1, 1829. 

t To John Easthope, Esq., March 3, 1831. 

i To the Rev. John Fawcett, March 9, 1831. 


dissenters’ ordination. 


71 


a Preacher,” a tribute to his memory, which allowed a more 
ample and impartial application of his critical powers than would 
have been in harmony with tlie first emotions of sorrow. “ In the 
composition lusiness,” he says, “ 1 have made very poor work all 
this long time past, with the little exception (exception I mean in 
point of industry merely—not successful industry) of the piece 
about the character of Hall as a preacher. It was on many ac¬ 
counts most reluctantly, that I consented to attempt that task, 
Avhich I did not, till urged with the plea that to refuse will appear 
unfriendly to his memory. It proved a matter of ditficulty and 
labor to excess, and was the work of several months, though it 
will not extend through more than about sixty pages in the printed 
book. There are parts of it that will not please the indiscrimi- 
nating admirers of the great preacher. The foresigiit that such 
must be the case, was one cause of my reluctance to the ser¬ 
vice.”* 

In 1829, Foster was invited to take part in the ordination of a 
minister over the congregation meeting in Swift’s Alley, Dublin. 
His reply indicates, that his early antipathy to the formal and 
ceremonial in religion, had only been strengthened by advancing 
years. “In answer to this application,” he says, “ while I feel 
it to be very friendly, jand to do me more honor than I can justly 
claim, I have to make a very simple story:—namely, that I have 
been I may say almost all my life, and still more* in the latter 
part of it, in the uniform habit of ridiculing our dissenting ordi- 
nation, as a relic of the hierarchy ; wdiich I have always intensely 
hated, as a poor apeing among us who have no ecclesiastical 
institution, of a ceremony which has all manner of propriety (as 
consistent with the pretensions) in an established ecclesiastical 
order. It carries an appearance, and (thougli. this be somewhat 
reservedly avowed) it makes, and is understood to make, a sort 
of pretension of conferring some kind of speciality of fitness, quali¬ 
fication, and authorization, to perform the duties of a Christian 
minister. There is a notion, that the ceremony creates some¬ 
thing more, and something more effective and sacred, in the rela¬ 
tion between him and the people, than could be contained in a 
serious deliberate engagement between them to accept each 
other in that relation. Now my wish would be, that every notion 
and practice of this kind, in short everything sacerdotal and cere¬ 
monial, were cleared out of our religious economy. 

* To B. Stokes, Esq., Dec. 19, 1831. 


72 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


“ This solemnity of ordination, partaking somewhat of a linger- 
ing superstition, has acquired of late years not a little of the ludi¬ 
crous, from the frequency and.facility with which, beyond former 
times, this supposed consecrated appointment and relation is dis- 
solved—and ofi' goes, or off is sent, the solemnly ordained minis¬ 
ter and pastor, in quest of his fortune elsewhere. 

“ In saying all this, I beg you not to take me as if I were 
making any very grave matter of the thing—as if I fancied this 
little rag of hierarchy infected with the plague, and capable of 
infusing some mighty mischief into our religious constitution. I 
merely think it would better comport with good sense, and with 
religious simplicity as the dissenters’ profession, to abandon such 
a ceremonial. I have acted on this opinion—or taste. In two 
places where in former years I have sustained the ‘settled’ 
ministerial office, I have declined, and with little difficulty or ob¬ 
jection on the part of the people, all such formality of appoint¬ 
ment. Several within my knowledge have done the same. Mr. 
Hall was never ordained, nor, as I have heard, Mr. Jay of Bath.* 

“ But whether I be right or wrong in such an opinion, or taste, 
or call it caprice or prejudice—it will be evident to you and Mr. 
Cross after such an explanation, that it would be quite inconsistent, 
almost ludicrously so, in me to take any part whatever in an 
ordination,—and to have it said, that I even ‘ took a voyage,’ 

‘ went across the sea,’ to officiate in such a transaction. 

“ I am glad to find you are likely to be agreeably united with 
a minister.As to the affair of ordination, it may very pro¬ 

bably be, that the settled state of opinions among your people may 
render such a ceremony indispensable to a satisfactory pastoral 
relation. I retain interest enough for the station in Swift’s Alley 
(where I once so little did my duty in capacity of minister for a 
little while), to wish very cordially that it may at length be 
favored with some religious prosperity.”! 

In the same letter, Foster adverts to the measure of Catholic 
emancipation, which had just been recommended in the king’s 
speech at the opening of parliament (Feb. 5). “ All the friends 

* “ As to the report concerning myself which Mr. F. heard, it was 
groundless. I was ordained, and the service was published ; I only devi¬ 
ated a little in the article of‘ Confession,’ substituting instead an address 
containing only some leading and general views of the gospel. As to Mr. 
Hall, he never was ordained ; but one day, some years ago, when asked by 
a brother why he was not ?—‘Because, sir,’ said he, ‘ I was a fool.’ ”— From 
the Rev. W. Jay, to the Editor, August 23, 1845. 

+ To John Purser, jun.. Esq., Feb. 21, 1829. 





CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 


73 


of political improvement,” he says, “ are in sympathy with the 
exhilarated feelings you express in anticipation of the grand 
change of measures respecting Ireland. At the same time we are 
still in some fear, lest the prodigious excitement in opposition, 
throughout this country, should have the effect of cribbing and 
narrowing the enactment in its passage through the legislature. 
The affair is now brought forward on its best and strongest ground 

■policy and imperious necessity—the bare dry abstract question 
of right, being I’educed to a trifle in so portentous a crisis. The 
catholic claim, as matter of pure right (under the name of liberty 
of conscience), has always appeared to me a little dubious, con¬ 
sidering the treacherous, and in all ways detestable, quality of 
popery ; but it has constantly appeared to me most perverse and 
contemptible to stickle about this, as a competent ground of refu¬ 
sal, in the face of an infinitely urgent interest of national safety 
and improvement.” 

To another friend, shortly after the Relief Bill had passed, he 
writes, “ It is a very grand thing that these people have been 
doing for the national welfare; and the more gratifying for 
having come with a surprising suddenness, and contrary to all 
that had been expected from the predominant movers of the 
exploit. It is a curious and memorable circumstance, that a 
measure which could not, in all probability, have been effected 
by a completely united ministry of whigs and liberals (had that 
been a possible composition of it), has been resolutely carried by 
a set of men avowedly opposed to liberalism, and opposed till 
lately to this very measure itself. One cannot but deem this a 
very signal interposition of the divine Providence in favor of the 
nation. It is a less worthy feeling, but a feeling which one can¬ 
not help thinking one’s self tolerably right in indulging, to exult 
in the overwhelming mortification thus inflicted on the whole 
proud, bigoted tribe of opposers of all improvement and benefi¬ 
cial innovation. They are (here in Bristol pre-eminently) 
amazed, and stunned, and astounded, almost out of their senses, 
to see the thing not only done, but done with a high hand by their 
own set ,—the high tories, their very idols, the high-church-and- 
state standard men,—and done in direct and cool contempt of all 
their loud and general remonstrances. And it is such a dashing 
and prodigious kick at ‘ the wisdom of our ancestors ’ as seems to 
threaten unmeasured hazard to everything else that has been 
under the sacred protection of that venerable and inviolable su- 


74 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


perstition. Those narrow-minded evangelicals in the church have 
had their special share in the mortification, by seeing among the 
bishops, those very men on whose acquisition to the bench they 
have been congratulating themselves and the church, declaring 
for this wicked innovation—Ryder, the two Sumners, and Cop- 
leston. Within our time, and a much longer period, there has 
never been anything comparable to this great red-coat minister for 
hewing away the old venerable boundaries of prescription and/ 
exclusion. As to w'hat he may do in the sequel, one dare not be 
sanguine. There are Portugal and the seat of Mahommedanism, 
and West India slavery, and the East India Monopoly, and the 
wretched mass of abuses in law, and the corn-laws, and taxation. 

I am afraid there is no betting on him for half of these, not to 
name such a thing as Parliamentary Reform, or any proceeding 
affecting the church property in Ireland. 

“ As to that same church establishment, its superstitious adhe¬ 
rents must be liable, one thinks, to some unwelcome intrusions of 
feeling from the fact that now a decided, unquestionable ma¬ 
jority of the people in the kingdom are recognized dissenters, in 
full possession of their civil and political rights and capacities,— 
the papist portion of them hating that establishment, and the pro- 
testant portion of them (such as are dissenters on principle) dis¬ 
approving all secular religious establishments,—and with palpable 
evidence that practical dissent is progressive in a continually and 
rapidly augmenting ratio. This cannot but appear a bad and 
threatening predicament for the church to have come into, with 
an absolute helplessness for getting out of it. This will continu¬ 
ally lessen the value of the church to the state as a political engine, 
as a formerly powerful mean of influence over the people. The 
state will come by degrees to consider whether the diminishing 
service which the church can render it be worth the cost. And 
when that consideration comes to operate, it will be discovered 
that the state is no very religious animal. 

“ At all events, it is inexpressibly gratifying, on the ground of 
religion, philanthropy, and all views of improvement, to observe 
the prominent characteristic of our times; a mobility, a tendency 
to alteration, a shaking, and cracking, and breaking up of the old 
condition of notions and things ; an exploding of the principle, 
that things are to be maintained because they are ancient and 
established. Even that venerable humbug called ‘ our admira¬ 
ble constitution suffeied woful assault and battery by this 








THE REFORM BILL. 


75 


recent transaction. This thing, the ‘ constitution,’ has been com¬ 
monly regarded, and talked, and written of (and was so talked of 
by the opposition in the late debates), as if it were something 
almost of divine origin, as if it had been delivered like the Law 
from the Mount, as a thing perfect, permanent, sacred, and invio¬ 
lable. But now we have it practically shown, that one of its cor¬ 
ners may be demolished without ceremony (Holy Temple though 
it has been accounted), when the benefit of the community re¬ 
quires an innovation ; and therefore so may any other corner or 
portion of it, when the same cause shall demand. In this special 
view the late measure appears to me of incalculable importance. 
It now becomes a principle recognized that any innovation may 
be made when justice and policy require it. It is true that great 
pains were taken by some of the advocates, to maintain that it 
was not a violation of the said thing ‘ constitution.^ But I willingly 
accept Mr. Peel’s description of it as ‘ a breaking in upon the con¬ 
stitution.^'^ To think of all the nauseous cant there has been 
about the ‘ constitution ’ whenever any old established evil has 
been proposed to be corrected or abolished 

The introduction of the Reform Bill (March 1, 1831) opened a 
prospect of political amelioration, which Foster “ had not the 
slightest expectation of living to see.” “ Are you, I wonder,” he 
writes (before hearing the issue of the debate previous to the first 
reading):}: “ as some of us are here, in fear for the result ? Still 
I hope that there has been success thus far—by this time the 
great preliminary question has been decided; we shall wait (you 
are not waiting) with extreme anxiety to hear how ; but even if 
it has been decided right, there is still a fearful trial further on, 
where one sees in firm array, and with desperately resolute as¬ 
pect, the whole mass and strength of inveterate corruption and 
aristocratic power. Witli that huge combination of corruption, 
it is ‘ now or never;’ and I shall be delightfully disappointed if 
its resistance do not prove substantially, though not wholly, suc¬ 
cessful. My fear is that the proud aristocracy are so besotted as 

* “ Mr. Peel, who is rather remarkable for groundless and unlucky con¬ 
cessions, owned that the late Act brok(? in on the Constitution of 1088 ; 
whilst in 1089, a very imposing minority of the then House of Lords, with 
a decisive majority in the lower House of Convocation, denounced this 
very Constitution of 1088, as breaking in on the English Constitution.”— 
Coleridge, On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to 
the idea of each, 3d edition, p. IS. 

f To B. Stokes, Esq., April 30, 1829. 

f To John Easthope, Esq., March 9, 1831 


76 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


not to understand the signs of the times ; as not to see, that if 
they do not concede, they will put all to ultimate hazard—I mean, 
for their own interests. They have been so long accustomed, and 
with complete impunity, to despise the people, under the name and 
character of the ‘ lower orders,’ ‘ the mob,’ and so forth, and to 
indulge and express their scorn of anything that miserable ‘ many¬ 
headed beast ’ can do against them, that it is vastly difficult for 
them to admit any conviction or fear about the matter.” 

“ It is not for this country only, but for other nations, for 
Europe, that one fearfully contemplates this juncture of our 
affairs. Should the present ministry and projected reform fail, 
who shall insure us against becoming again involved in a general 
war for despotism against liberty,—ruining ourselves to ruin the 
cause of justice and the people all over the continent ? The 
scene and the prospects are dark and portentous there. All un¬ 
quiet in the gigantic republic (it is little else) of France ; all per¬ 
verse and ill-starred in Belgium ; the despots all in a fever of 
rage and eagerness, if they dare, to be in action ; and too proba¬ 
bly, Warsaw by this time in a state of blood, and sack, and deso¬ 
lation, to be followed up by all the rigors of revenge and aggra¬ 
vated tyranny over the whole people ; while there is no power to 
interfere to turn that revenge, in fire and brimstone, on the barba. 
rian oppressor.” 

“ The only consolation is, that there is a sovereign power 
reigning over all. That consolation, however, is mingled with 
the gloom of knowing that the supreme Governor has a contro¬ 
versy, a fearful account to settle, with all the nations for their 
impiety and wickedness. So that it is but too sadly probable, 
there are ‘ vials of wrath ’ to be poured out on them all, before 
happier times shall come, that is to say, before they are worthy 
or fit for such times.” 

The return of so vast a majority in favor of the bill at the 
general election in 1831, was hastily deemed by many, to be the 
death-blow of toryism, and even Foster indulged expectations of 
the triumphant progress of liberal principles, which a calm review 
of the state of the conflicting parties not long after, convinced him 
were far too sanguine. It is interesting to contrast the bright 
vision of political optimism which his ardent imagination created 
at this crisis, with the sombre views he generally entertained. 
“ It would be doing no good,” he says,"^ “ if I could communi- 
* To John Easthope, Esq., M.P., May 21, 1831 






THE KEFORM BILL. 


77 


cate any share of the elated wild-fire spirits with which w'e have 
been half-mad here, for you have quite enough of it, and more 
than d^iough already. . . . The result of the dissolution must 
have surpassed, I should think, the most sanguine dreams that 
flattered the imaginations of the ministry themselves. Is it not 
possible, if the very truth could be known, that some of them 
may be a \\i\\e frightened at their own success? For it is little 
better, as the opposition prints and orators are truly saying, day 
after day, than a triumph of plain radicalism ; and Lord Grey is 
notoriously a high-minded aristocrat, and probably some of his 
titled associates are much of the same temper. But aristocracy 

is now dashed from its proud position, never to regain it. 

Doubtless, our nobility and commoners of rank and wealth will 
continue to have weight and influence in our national afiliirs— 
great enough in all reason; but it now appears to be doomed to 
be quite secondary and subordinate to the end of the chapter. 
This is what we wanted ; but we should wonder if it can exactly 
please all those personages of high degree, who are concurring 
with apparent zeal, to accomplish the prodigious change. As to 
such a ‘ my lord ’ as he that is denominated Brougham and Vaux, 
I can imagine that he may not care ... he has something that 
mounts him proudly above title and all its stupid pomps ; but as 
to many of those who are ostensibly to coincide with him in the 
present, measures, will it not secretly aggrieve them to suffer a 
deduction of about fifty per cent, at a stroke from the practical 
value of their nobility ? 

.... “We may now look for what shall approach rather 
nearly to a real representation of the people ; and it is evident 
enough that such a House of Commons will assume a lofty ascen¬ 
dency over every other power in the state.It will say in a 

menacing tone, ‘ My name is Legion, for we are many; we are 
in effect the people ; we express their will and bear their authori¬ 
ty, to which every other authority shall yield.’ 

“ From this time forth, the ministry— any ministry that means 
to maintain place for three months, must act in conformity to the 
natiemal mind. And to a ministry willing so to act, a prodigious 
advantage is gained by this surprising change. They will no 
longer be harassed to distraction by endless compromises to be 
adjusted; by the demands and" menacing power of competitor 
factions ; by the debased conditions on which his Grace or Paul 
Benfield will give the support of his half-dozen or half-score of 




78 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTEIi. 


rotten boroughs ; by the anxiety to distribute the wages of corrup¬ 
tion in such a manner as to keep the business going on, and the 
system from going to pieces. A ministry will now be abl^, in the 
name and strength of the people, to defy the contrivances of in- 
ti’iguers, ‘the influences behind the throne;’ and the personal 
caprices and perversities there may be on the throne itself. Is 
[King] William fully aware what he is doing for the prerogative, 
as it is named, of his successors on that seat of power ? Perhaps 
he is, and is gratified to think that he has possessed and exerted a 
greater power than any of lliem will ever enjoy. It is not con¬ 
ceivable there can ever come a crisis in which a British monarch 
shall possess a power equal to the making such a prodigious dash 
as what he has now made. There can never again so much de¬ 
pend on the single will and determination of the crown. He 
might, for some time at least, have stood out against the national 
wishes and interest, abetting the aristocratic and boroughmonger 
party in a great degree, in defiance of the reforming spirit, retain¬ 
ing a tory ministry supported by a corrupt parliament; but he has 
irrecoverably deprived the monarchy of all such power. . . It will 
be high amusement to see ‘ the bill ’ driving and forcing its way 
through the Lords, amidst the silent mortification of some, and the 
ungovernable rage of others. That they absolutely must pass it, 
and dare not even presume to modify it, is now, I suppose, a mat¬ 
ter beyond all question. But to think of the desperate fury of a 
large quantity of them !” 

During the interval between the introduction and settlement of 
this great measure, the elation of his feelings had subsided, and 
he began to look with suspicion and anxiety on the efforts that 
would be made by the enemies of the popular cause, to nullify its 
efficiency. “ You have it your own way at last,” he says, “the 
thing is done; and I congratulate you. And now, what do you 
soberly and deliberately reckon on as the consequence, after the 
reform in your house shall have been carried into effect ? The 
exultation and sanguine expectations of all around me, were put- 
ting me, last night, to look a little coolly at the prospect. And I 
confess the nearest and largest circumstance in it was not of the 
most pleasant aspect or color, being no other than this—a pro- 
tracted and deadly warfare between the two parties, probably re¬ 
sulting in still greater changes, and perhaps at length in some 
great catastrophe. It is unlikely that the aristocracy will have 
learnt anv wisdom from their experience. Where, in all Europe, 




THE REFORM BILL. 


79 


have their class learnt anything from events which might have in¬ 
structed all but stocks and stones ? The pride of our aristocracy 
(the proudest in the world), so desperately mortified, is not likely 
to subside into prudence and accommodation, but to work into 
rage, and a fierce systematic hostility against the ascendency of 
the popular interest. And their means for this warfare are mul- 
tifarious and formidable. Their vast wealth, their consequent 
local influence, their widely pervading connection with the church, 
the army, the law, the magistracy, and every shape of authority 
and institution in the whole country ; their insertion into the edge 
(so to speak) of the highest part of what should be the democratic 
body, the great number of them, and those immediately next to 
them, that will come into the new House of (A)mmons—the ac¬ 
complished education and proficiency of their old leaders in every 
sort of state-craft, intrigue, and collusion—a court (king included 
probably) desperately and incorrigibly tenacious of the old system 
—the earnest favor of all the ‘great powers,’ as they are called, 
except France; and France perhaps going to terrify all the world 
again with the excesses of democracy,—all this, I confess, fore¬ 
bodes to me anything rather than a quiet course of events and 
improvement in this country. 

“ And then the reforming ministry, with a reformed Flouse of 
Commons,—they will soon lose the favor of the people, and so be 
left bare-to the unrelenting siege of their mortal enemies, if they 
do not dare and accomplish some grand exploits of almost revolu¬ 
tionary change. Think of Ireland, —the state of the poor—the 
load of taxation—the navigation laws—the East India and West 
India affairs—the municipal police—the Church —the foreign 
relations (Portugal, &c.)—the whole hideous chaos of the law— 
not to name the banking system and various other matters. 
These will require a series of the boldest measures that ever 
statesmen ventured. Will Lord Grey’s ministry (or whoever else 
shall constitute the ministry) venture such daring and radical 
measures? or be able to carry them through parliament, if they 
do venture, in the face of the combined, dogged opposition of an 
aristocracy co-operating with other interests also, besides the 
purely aristocratic, in employing every possible expedient of 
frustration ? 

“But if the reformed legislature shall fail to accomplish some 
grand changes, and so disappoint the people, whal then ? . 

How deadly bitter must be the mortification of the aristocracy at 



80 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the present moment; to think that just twenty-four months since, 
one-fifth part voluntarily conceded of the reform now forced from 
them, would have made them grand favorites of the people, and 
established them in almost undisputed power for many years to 
come ! Still, I have no faith that even Ihis infliction on their 
in/atuation will convert them to a different course of policy. Do 
tell me whetiier your anticipations correspond to those I have been 
expressing, or whether yours are bright and placid.”* 

The preceding extracts show the deep interest Foster took in 
political subjects ; but it would be very erroneous to infer from 
tlie vehemence of his expressions, that he was influenced by the 
spirit of party. To do him justice, it is necessary to take into 
account his exalted idea of human life. Habituated to view it in 
its highest relations, under its moral aspect and as connected with 
its future destiny, he contemplated the general tenor of men’s 
pursuits with profound regret. The great majority he saw, were 
insensible to the awful grandeur of their existence, and to the im¬ 
mense possibilities of good that it could unfold, when actuated by 
pure and elevated principles. For the mass of the people he was 
ready to make large allowances; the consumption of their time in 
unintermitting toil, in numberless cases their physical destitution, 
and still more their intellectual and moral depression, excited Ids 
deepest sympathy. But when he beheld the higher ranks bar¬ 
tering their prerogatives of birth, education, wealth, and power, 
for personal aggrandisement or selfish indulgences, in disregard 
or violation of the well-being of tiie multitudes below them, his 
feelings were often tinctured with an indignant acerbity. , He 
considered that towards delinquents of this class leniency was not 
permitted ; for weighing Iheir misdeeds, the balances ought to be 
hung with the utmost nicety ; they were to be tried in accordance 
with their rank. Statesmen and legislators could not complain, 
that by his adjudication they were placed “ on the low level of the 
inglorious throng.” Far from it ; “to whom much is given, of 
him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed 
much, of him they will ask the more,” was the rule which he ap¬ 
plied with a stern severity.t How high he placed the standard 

* To John Easthope, Esq., M.P., June 12, 1832, 

t “It is vastly reasonable to be requiring lenient judgments on the con¬ 
duct, and respectful sympathy for the feelings of public men, while we see 
with what a violent passion, power and station are sought, with what 
desperate grappling claws of iron they are retained, and with what grief 
and mortification they are lost. It might be quite time enough, we should 


THE REFORM BILL. 


81 


of political virtue, and how little he allowed' his admiration of 
transcendant abilities and coincidence on several great questions 
to warp his judgment and induce a more favorable verdict, is 
shown in his review of Fox’s Historical Work, where he portrays 
his ideal of a statesman with a master’s hand. 


think, to commence this strain of tenderness, when in order to fill the places 
of power and emolument, it has become necessary to dra^ by force retiring 
virtue and modest talent from private life, and to retain them in those situ¬ 
ations by the same compulsion, in spite of the most earnest wishes to re¬ 
treat, excited by delicacy of conscience and a disgust at the pomp of state. 
So long as men are pressing as urgently into the avenues of place and 
power, as ever the genteel rabble of the metropolis have pushed and 
crowded into the play-house to see the new actor, and so long as a most 
violent conflict is maintained between those who are in power and those 
who want to supplant them, we think statesmen form by eminence the 
class of persons to whose characters both the contemporary examiner and 
the historian are not only authorized, but in duty bound, to administer jus¬ 
tice in its utmost rigor, without one particle of extenuation. While forcing 
their way toward office in the state, and while maintaining the possession 
once acquired, they are apprised, or might and should be apprised, of the 
nature of the responsibility, and it is certain they are extremely well ap¬ 
prised of the privileges. They know that the public welfare depends, in 
too great a degree, on their conduct, and that the people have a natural in¬ 
stinctive prejudice in favor of their leaders, and are disposed to confide to 
the utmost extent. They know that a measure of impunity, unfortunate for 
the public, is enjoyed by statesmen, their very station affording the means 
both of concealment and defence for their delinquencies. They know that 
in point of emolument they are more than paid from the labors of the people 
for any services they render; and that they are not bestowing any particular 
favor on the country by holding their offices, as there are plenty of men, 
almost as able and good as themselves, ready to take their places, if they 
would abdicate them. When to all this is added the acknowledged fact, 
that the majority of this class of men have trifled with their high responsi¬ 
bility, and taken criminal advantage of their privileges, we can have no 
patience to hear of any claim for a special indulgence of charity, in reading 
and judging the actions of statesmen. 

“ On the ground of morality in the abstract, separately from any con¬ 
sideration of the effect of his representations, the biographer of statesmen is 
bound to a very strict application of the rules of justice, since these men 
constitute, or at least belong to, the uppermost class of the inhabitants of 
the earth.' They have stronger inducements, arising from their situation, 
than other men, to be solicitous for the rectitude of their conduct; their sta¬ 
tion has the utmost advantage for commanding the assistance of whatever 
illumination a country contains; they see, on the large scale, the effect of 
all the grand principles of action ; they make laws for the rest of mankind, 
and they direct the execution of justice. If the eternal laws of morality are 
to be applied with a soft and lenient hand in the trial and judgment of such 
an order of men, it will not be worth while to apply them at all to the sub¬ 
ordinate classes of mankind ; as a morality that exacts but little, where the 
means and the responsibility are the greatest, would betray itself to con¬ 
tempt by pretending to sit in solemn judgment on the humbler subjects of 
its authority. The laws of morality should operate, like those of nature, in 
the most palpable manner on the largest substances.”— Contributions, <^c., 
tathe Eclectic Review, Vol. L, pp. 225, 227. Review of Maediarmid’s 
Lives of British Statesmen. October and JVovember, 1808. 

7 


VOL. II. 


82 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


His views of the great social relations were sustained by the 
natural strength of his character, and nourished by meditation in 
a life of comparative seclusion. Had he engaged in practical 
politics, he might have felt the necessity of curbing the impatience 
of his ardent mind while watching the slow progress of improve¬ 
ment, and have found some amends for a less rapid advance, 
amidst the complications of modern society, in the greater security 
with which the requisite changes are brought about. 


LETTERS. 

CXLIII. TO J. B. WILLIAMS, ESQ.* 

April 20, 1827 

Dear Sir,— I am, or oug-ht to be, ashamed to think how long it is since 
our friend Mr. H. offered me whatever should be the first opportunity in 
his communications with your part of the country, for the conveyance 
of a line to you, in acknowledgment of your highly acceptable and val¬ 
uable present of a copy of your life of Henry—a book which, in ad¬ 
dition to its intrinsic value, and to the kindness of the presenter, has the 
grace of so very elegant an exterior, I beg you to believe, that this ill- 
looking lateness of acknowledgment, from one who is procrastination 
all over, in all things and times, has in real truth nothing to do with the 
sincerity of the thanks which I request you to accept. 

' Your many curious and interesting additions to the work have rendered 
it far more valuable than it was before, especially in connecting its sub¬ 
ject, by so many remarkable points, with those times as to make it greatly 
more illustrative of them. While, as intimately present with the imme¬ 
diate family, the reader is made to see much more of what was doing or 
suffering by that illustrious fraternity to which, by the character of 
their piety and zeal, they belonged.—Very curious too are the various 
notices which may be considered as simply antiquarian. And the very 
copious-bicZco: puts every part of the contents at the reader’s use. 

I am willing to believe that the labor has been a pleasure to you ; else 
I should feel something very like a commiserating sympathy; for the in¬ 
dustry must have been very great and jirotracted. Unthinking readers 
are little aware what it has cost an author or editor to arrange and elu 
cidate a multitude of particulars involved in the obscurity, perplexity, 
and scattered variety of authorities, of the history of a distant age. As to 
come departments of history and biography, I never can bring myself to 

* Now Sir J. B. Williams, Knight, the Hall, Wem. 



LETTERS. 


63 


feel that it is worth while to undergo all this labor; but with respect to that 
noble race of saints, of which the world will never see the like again (for in 
the millennium good men will not be formed and sublimed amidst perse¬ 
cution), it is difficult to say what degree of minute investigation is too 
much, especially in an age in which it is the fashion to misrepresent and 
decry them. 

The portraits, besides being what may be believed individual likenesses, 
form a very characteristic addition to the work, as being so strikingly 
puritanical, not only in attire, but in the very cast and character of their 
looks. That is to say, one cannot help feeling that they look somehow 
different from what the very same countenances would have done if Mr. 
and Mrs. Henry had not been puritans,—more unworldly, more honest, 
more calmly firm, more absolutely good. 

I trust that both the editor and the readers will be better for the more 
intimate acquaintance with them obtained through these researches and 
illustrations. I do not know what may be argued as to the extent of cir¬ 
culation ; but if we may believe that the reprints of religious books of 
the former age obtain a fair proportion of readers, there ought to be a 
favorable probability for a book of the same class when brought out in 
so greatly improved a state. 

Wishing you health, and every good of the still higher order, 

I am, dear Sir, Yours, very respectfully, 

J. Foster. 


CXLIV. TO JOHN EASTHOPE, ESQ., M.P. 

Stapleton, May 23, 1S27. 

.... How does the new elevation seem to agree with you ? Does 
the lofty character of a legislator, a senator of Great Britain, a member 
of that assembly where all the wisdom and virtue of a great nation is 
presumed to be concentrated—does it sit on you easily and gracefully ? 
.... I own I am sorry you are there, from an apprehension of more 
evil befalling yourself than can be countervailed by the good which as 

an individual you can render to the nation.But on which side of 

the house have you taken that seat ? If on the right side, how very 
queer you must feel your situation,—having gone into the house in the 
expectation of being in endless battle array against that fortress of power, 
and any gang that was likely ever to garrison it. You must feel a sad 
quenching of that fine ferocity with which you were prepared to stand 
to your gun on the assailants’ battery. Can you be perfectly free from 
all suspicion that there is some shrewd turn of the black art in the case, 
when you, the whole tribe of you, patriots, reformers, democrats, and 
what not, find yourselves suddenly transported through the air, from your 
warlike position \n front of Canning, to a station of alliance and fighting 
co-operation beside him and behind him, while he has not made so much 
as a hypocritical profession of any change of principles or measures ? 




84 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


The riddance of a good quantity of the most rotten aristocracy from the 
administration is plainly enough a good thing so far. But we tolks who 
are at a great distance from the grand central monopoly of wisdom, and 
therefore of slow and obtuse intellects, cannot well comprehend this 
zealous coalition of the avowed enemies of all corruption with a minis¬ 
ter who has been through all times and seasons its friend and defender, 
—and more than so, fairly tells them, as if in easy scorn of their gulli- 
billity, that he will continue in his old course, explicitly scouting before¬ 
hand their parliamentary reform, their attempts in behalf of the dissent¬ 
ers, and all that. ' To vs it would really seem as if this odd sort of league 
is made at the sole expense of what had been thought the wiser and bet¬ 
ter-meaning party; and that the reformers, the economists, &c., are con¬ 
senting to forego all their best projects and even principles for the honor 
of being denominated . . . . “ his honorable friends.” The nation truly 
is to be a mighty gainer by this famous compact. 

But “ catholic emancipation ! catholic emancipation !” why yes, very 
well so far, if that, even so much as that, were in any likelihood to be 
effected ; but this worthy-minister has consented to abandon even that to 
its feeble and remote chance. For, as left to its own shifts, what chance 
has it in “ the Lords ?” 

But even supposing this most virtuous and patriotic minister, backed . 
by his scores of converts and new friends, could, would, and did carry 
this measure; what then ? Will he alleviate the oppressive burdens of 
the country ? Will he cut down the profligate and enormous expendi¬ 
ture of the government ? Will he bring any of the detestable public de¬ 
linquents to justice ? Will he blow up a single rotten borough ? Will 
he rout out that infernal court of chancery ? Will he do anything to¬ 
ward creating an effective police through the country, every part of 
which, is every night, in complete exposure to attacks of plunderers and 
ruffians ? Or (to glance abroad) will he do anything for Greece, or any¬ 
thing to real, effectual purpose for what is named the Peninsula ? 
Nay, will he do anything at last for even amendment of the West Indies, 
which he has palavered so much about ? No, nothing of all tliis. So 
that the good of having got this same admirable prime minister consists 
in—the good he will not do ! 

To revert to catholic emancipation (I hate that “ catholic ,^'’—“ popery,'^ 
and“ 7 )opis/i,” were the more proper words with our worthy ancestors) but 
catholic emancipation. Well, if I were on your bench or any bench in 
the House, I should most zealously vote for that measure ; but with a 
very different cast of feeling from what seems to prevail among its advo¬ 
cates in that House. They will have it that popery, that infernal pest, 
is now become (if it ever was otherwise) a very tolerably good and harm¬ 
less thing—no intolerance or malignity about it now—liberalized by the 
illuminated age—the popish priests the worthiest, most amiable, most use¬ 
ful of men. Nay, popery is just as good as any other religion, except 
some small j)reference for our “national establishment.” Nothing so 


LETTERS. 


85 


. impertinent, nothing so much to be deprecated and condemned, as the 
idle and mischievous fanaticism of attempting to convert papists to pro- 
testantism. To hear some of your wise men talk in that house, one 
would think that the reformation, some centuries back, had been almost 
a needless thing. “ Don’t be so silly and methodistical as to cant about 
the restoration of the Christian religion to its simplicity and purity. 
The popish church are just as good Christians as any of yourselves can 
be ; and as to their claim to an entire equality of civil privileges, it has 
not the slightest speck of reasonable doubt upon it.” 

Now, my dear Sir, is not all this most infamous ? Does any sensible 
man honestly doubt whether popery be intrinsically of the very same 
spirit that it ever was ? Does any mortal doubt, whether if it were ever 
to regain an ascendency of power, an uncontrolled dominion in tliis coun¬ 
try, it would reveal the lieiid, and again revel in persecution ? When 
did ever the Romish church disavow, in the face of the world, any of its 
former principles, revoke any of its odious decrees, or even censure any 
of the execrable abominations, the burnings, the tortures, the massacres, 
the impostures, perpetrated under its authority ? And look at its zealots 
even in Ireland ; what is the spirit of its partizaiis ? What is the lan¬ 
guage of its Doyle and Co. ? 

If I had to preface a vote in the house with a sentence or two, it 
wtmld be to this effect:—“ I would urge this measure most earnestly; 
not that I can profess to feel this demand strongly grounded on a strict 
claim of right; for I believe there is essentially and inseparably in popery 
something of deadly tendency to the welfare of a state. That point, 
however, I deem not worth debating in the present case, wliere the mea¬ 
sure comes with such an overpowering claim of policy, of expediency, 
of utility. Without adopting this measure, you absolutely can never 
tranquillize the people of Ireland. And to have Ireland continuing in the 
condition in which it will otherwise continue, is an evil and a danger so 
tremendous, that any possible evil to be apprehended from the emancipa¬ 
tion is reduced to an utter triffe in the comparison. But what evil, wliat 
danger can there be to apprehend from the emancipation ? Are you so 
dreaming, or so lunatic, as to fancy it possible that popery, whatever civil 
privileges were given it, can ever acquire an ascendency or even any 
material power in the British state ? What! popery attain to an over¬ 
awing power, in spite of the rapidly augmenting knowledge and intelli¬ 
gence of the people—the almost miraculous diffusion of the Bible—the 
spirit of license, and fearless discussion of all subjects—the extension of 
religion, and of dissent from all hierarchies—with the settled deep, and 
general prejudice against popery into the bargain—and the wealth, power, 
rank, and influence, nine-tenth part of them, on the side of protestant- 
ism ? How can you keep your countenances, how can you "help laugh¬ 
ing outright, while you are pretending to entertain any such apprehen¬ 
sions ?” 

But what presumption it is, for a sitter in an obscure country garret. 


86 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


to be writing opinions about state matters to a sitter in the “ imperial * 
parliament /” 


CXLV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

* Stapleton, June 22, 1827. 

.... I went to pass a week or two with an old friend and relation, a 
physician, in order to take his advice about anything remedial or pallia¬ 
tive for the habitual weakness and frequent painful sensations of my 
eyes, which are failing sadly. It often occurs to my thoughts how my 
John and your James are quit of all these mortal infirmities, grievances, 
and apprehensions ; no longer involved in the frailty of our animated, 
endangered, and perishing clay ; no longer dependant for their know¬ 
ledge, their activity, their enjoyments, on these organs of matter; no 
longer having their “ foundation in the dust.” But we shall not long 
stay behind; we too are fast advancing toward a separation from all 
these elements; let us hope and sedulously prepare to meet again, in a 
nobler economy, those who have already arrived there, and have carried 
our affections with them. 

.... I have just declined, from conscious necessity and duty, on 
several accounts, a journey of three weeks through North Wales, with 
a little party of friends at Worcester, who kindly solicited me to take a 
seat in a young lady’s elegant one-horse vehicle, herself the driver. 
Snowdon! the grand chain bridge! romantic valleys, cataracts, castles, 
and all the rest! It would truly have been a vast luxury. But under 
the veto of ever so many causes combined, I am to see none of those 
things ; some of which I did see about fifteen years since, in company 
with the person who is to be the leader in this new expedition, and 
who tells me he has never had the opportunity of inviting me under 
such favorable circumstances to renew the adventure, and thinks very 
improbable he ever may again. He is an admirable guide, and I am 
enthusiastic with respect to that enchanted region ; but old conscience 
said “ NO,” in consideration of good Avife’s unfortunate health and impri¬ 
sonment at home in this dingy place—of studious works sadly neglected, 
though promised to be done long since—of the expense of such luxury ; 
and all this corroborated by a rheumatic affection of my back, which, 
w^ere it to continue or become worse, would disable me for the climbing 
of mountains for the purpose of seeing the panorama. 

.... I have the most unwelcome task before me of preaching in 
substitution for Hall on Sunday evening; he having consented, very re¬ 
luctantly, to go to London to preach two sermons for the benefit of our 
Bristol Academy. 

CXLVI. TO JOHN PURSER, SEN.^ ESQ. 

Stapleton, 1827 

Mt dear old Friend, —Unless Mr. Evans, who kindly offers to con 




LETTERS. 


87 


vey this, shall happen to name the writer, it will appear to you as from 
the hand of a perfect stranger. Nor can I be sure you will not say that 
the case might just as well have been actually so, for any interest you 
can now feel in recalling to mind that you did once know such a person 
as J. Foster. 

One has, on some occasions in the long course of life, felt one could 
say, with perfect consciousness of truth, what one could not reasonably 
expect to be believed—all appearances being so directly to the contrary. 
The present is such a one ; so that I shall have no just cause to com¬ 
plain, if my declaration [is doubted] that, ever since I left Ireland to this 
hour, I have retained a very grateful remembrance of my old friend Mr. 
Purser, and of his family ; concerning whom I have inquired and heard, 
at intervals, from various persons that I have met with, through the long 
period of more than thirty years. 

It would be a vain attempt to explain (and indeed I may justly sup¬ 
pose you would not at all care about any explanation), how then it could 
have happened that I never, in any instance, gave any token of such regard 
as I am professing to have constantly felt. Having always been intend¬ 
ing to write to you, and not long to delay doing so, I have sometimes 
thought there was some kind of spell or fatality in the case. In truth 
there is a certain strange power or tendency in delay to prolong and per¬ 
petuate itself. And after it has continued a considerable time, perhaps 
several years, there comes a feeling, that the matter of character is now 
quite a lost thing, and that therefore the case can become no worse. 
Something partly similar has happened with respect to one or two early 
friends in this country, still living, held always in friendly remembrance, 
never visited in the remote places of their abode, and their last letters, 
of a date indefinitely far in the past, remaining unanswered. But this 
case respecting my two Irish friends (the senior and the junior), is by 
much the worst in my long but unimportant history. The mortification 
it causes me is such, that I could almost wish to be able to introduce 
myself^— nx)t as an ancient friend, little deserving to be remembered a.s 
such, but as a person who has just been very much interested in hearing 
a particular account of you from a lady, whose sister has been with you 
within the last year, and who gave such an account of you that I thought 
I should have been much gratified to be acquainted with such a family. 
It recalled to my imagination once again, with a vivid freshness, the 
interesting social scenes and circumstances of a period lying on the 
ascent of life, on the other side as it were, of a mountain which I have 
long since passed over, and am now descending as my old friend also is, 
far down toward the low, last tract of life. But the images so revived 
(which, however, have never faded), were in strong contrast, in many 
essential points, with those presented by the description of what I should 
find if I were in the same scene again. One important and estimable 
member of the family removed from the world ; a younger one long 
since grown up, and placed in family relations far off from you ; another, 


88 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


once my young friend and pupil, now in middle age, doubly a family 
man, and active in a sphere of business and various cares,—all this is 
so vastly difierent from the picture in my mind, that I have no power of 
thought to pass the one into the other, so as to realize this later form of 

the scene to my imagination. 

As to myself^ you are not likely to have heard anything scarcely of 
the course of my life, marked by none but common occurrences. Since 
I saw Ireland I have spent several years in some, and many years in 
other, parts of England ; in Sussex—near London—near Bristol—at 
Fronie—at a remote place high up in Gloucestershire—and lastly, near 
ten years again near Bristol, to which last place I have always retained 
a partiality ever since I was at the academy there in my youth. In two 
of these places of residence I was for a considerable time a settled 
preacher as we call it,—at one of them, at two periods distant from each 
other ; but in each instance was compelled to give in, by some kind of 
debility in the parts about the throat which rendered the constantly 
recurring exercise of public speaking difficult and painful. Always, 
however, up to this time, I have continued to preach occasionally. Just 
twenty years I have been a married man, with great cause to be happy 

in that connection.We have two daughters, our only surviving 

children; a son who would have been now eighteen, died last year of 
consumption. I have great reason to be pleased at having had my lot 
cast, temporarily, in a variety of situations, though with no very remark¬ 
able events in any of them ; since this has given me the opportunity 
and advantage of seeing more of the nature of things and men, than I 
might if fixed during the main part of life in one place. I am now in 
the fifty-eighth year, and feel very sensible monitions of approach to old 
age, especially in the decay of sight, and something in that of memory. 


CXLVII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

September^ 1827. 

... I have cause to sympathize with your emotions in remem¬ 
brance of one whom you see on earth no more ; it being this week of 
last year that I resigned my only son. A day or two since, when left in 
solitude, I went up to an unoccupied room where a number of things 
that were his are put away ; and opened once again, a box where vari¬ 
ous chemical articles remain exactly in the order in which his own hands 
placed them ;—and thought of him as now in another world, with the 
questions rising again—Where ? oh where ? In what manner of exist¬ 
ence ? Amidst what scenes, and revelations, and society ? With what 
remembrances of this world and of us whom he has left behind in it ? 
Questions so often breathed, but to which no voice replies. What a 
sense of wonder and mystery overpowers the mind,—to think that he 
who was here, whose last look, and words, and breath, I witnessed,— 





LETTERS. 


89 


whose eyes I closed, whose remains are mouldering in the earth not far 
hence, should actually be now a conscious intelligence, in another econo¬ 
my of the universe ! Such thoughts have numberless times come in 
solemn shade over tjour mind; but sometimes they have come in bright¬ 
ness. VVe have the delightful confidence that our departed sons have 
now infinitely the advantage of us; and that they are trusting in the 
divine mercy in Jesus Christ for us, that we shall one day reach their 
happy abodes, never again to suffer a separation. And now a year has 
been taken from the diminishing interval between our losing them in 
death, and recovering them, I trust, in immortality. 

It is an all-wise and all-gracious power that presides over the appoint¬ 
ment of those who remain to us. Not less in wisdom and goodness will 
it be, if he shall withdraw from us yet another, or another of those who 
remain to us. Nevertheless, 1 will hope that such a visitation is not 
approaching you. I should be gratified to hear that the one you are at 
present so anxiously watching for is recovering to a less endangered 
state. 


CXLVIII. TO BENJAMIN STOKES, ESQ. 

March JO, 1S2S. 

My dear Sir,— There seems to be a gloomy shade hovering over my 

mind since I received W-’s letter on Saturday. The image, as now 

lifeless, of the man that I have so often seen in the highest healtli and 
spirits, is continually presenting itself. And many times, these two days, 
the social scenes of his house, where I have repeatedly been received in 
so very kind a manner, have come with vividness to my memory. The 
extreme suddenness seems almost to disable the mind to realize the fact 
in thought. The idea of his moving rapidly on, in vigorous life to a 
certain spot, to one precise point, and on coming exactly thither, being, 
as in a moment, in another world, renders the mystery of death still more 
intense. And there being nothing to excite the slightest anticipation, 
when he set out oil the journey, when he came within a mile—within a 
few steps of the fatal point! How true the saying, that “ in the midst 
of life we are in death !” 

It must have been an almost overwhelming shock, which each of, his 
near relations, but above all his wife, would feel on receiving the mes¬ 
senger or the letter that brought the sad information. W-intimated 

an apprehension of serious danger to her, on account of a frail and sink¬ 
ing state of health. But I hope she will not be the victim of the first 
dreadful emotions, or the subsequent distress and sadness. The younger 
portion of his family have, in their lively age, the power that counteracts 
in due time, the pressure of sorrow. It must appear to you all a strange 
and affecting circumstance, that the son, the brother, the husband, the 
father that was, a few days since, is now no more in any of those relations, 
no more to be conversed with, and, after a few days, to be seen no more 
on earth. 




90 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


I join in the wish which will be felt by you all, that this solemn event 
may be rendered salutary to the best interests of those who suf&r so 
mournful a visitation. 

I feel very sensibly the kindness of your renewed invitation at this 
season of sorrow. I could not hesitate if the circumstances, as I will 
plainly describe them, did not put upon me what I think you will acknow¬ 
ledge to be an absolute compulsion. I say not a word about what I did 

mention, for one thing, in my re])ly to W-, the return of that 

incommodious affection under which I suffered at Bourton, when I had 
the pleasure of seeing you there. It is a very inconvenient attendant on 
travelling and visiting; but 1 think it is beginning to yield a little to the 

application of what was so kindly sent me by Miss B-. At any rate 

I would not, after your letter, let that prevent my seeing you at the time 
I had eno-ao-cd. It is this matter of Dr. Marshman’s that forms the iron 

o 

of the bondage. The case stands thus. He has found his ugly task, 
partly from the complication and extent of subjects involved in it, vastly 
more toilsome and tedious than he calculated ; and now he is receiving 
letters day after day from friends in different quarters, expressing wonder 
what he can be about, telling him that he is leaving them without com¬ 
petent means to act efficiently as his advocates. He is therefore become 
painfully anxious to get the article, or rather the first and larger half of 
it, out very soon. As to what himself hsis now remaining to be done, he 
might dispense with any assistance I can give him. But the thing is 
that I have been inveigled into undertaking to write something in the 
way of preface^ in my own name ; and it has unfortunately spread into 
such prolixity, that it cannot now be brought to a decent ending, short of 
the length of a long sermon. A portion of it remains yet to be composed, 
and the whole of it to be (I dare say) tediously revised, transcribed, and 
seen through the press. My experience certifies me that this is impossi¬ 
ble to be done within the short interval before the time that I had so con¬ 
fidently j)romised myself to see you at Worcester. And the interposition 
of a week of delay at this juncture would really be a very seriems injury 
to the pressing interests of one of the best men, as I certainly believe, on 
earth, and combined with his the interests of Serampore. If I were to 
say I must go to Worcester, he is too unassuming by far to remonstrate, 
but he would feel extreme regret; and he is half jaded and oppressed to 
death already, between the tedious labor and the grievous and harassinor 
nature of what he has been about. In addition to the disagreeable task 
on my hands, I must find time, if I can, to answer several of the letters 
which I too have received on the business. 

This, my dear Sir, is the simple truth of the case. You will partly see 
the stress of it, but cannot in the same degree in which 1 am made sensi¬ 
ble of it from being imj)licated in it. I presume that your sister and ]\Ir. 
Dasthope are with you, or at the house of mourning—emphatically such. 
I shall sympathize with you on the melancholy scene which is probably 
yet to come. How differently will the house, the gardens, the church. 


LETTERS. 


91 


and above all the family, appear from what they have ever done be¬ 
fore ! 

I will not conclude without saying that I promise myself to see you at 
a little distance, [ hope, further on in the spring—if indeed the event that 
darkens to you this period of the spring, did not warn against all confi¬ 
dence in projects for to-morrow. 


CXLIX. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, August Ifi, 1828. 

.... So your old war against London, in firm alliance, too, with 

Mrs. Hill, is to end in submission.And there, said 1, looking in 

the map of Cornwall for the situation of Camberne, and finding it at so 
practicable a distance from Portreath, St. Agnes, and what not, there 
goes away my dream of passing a few weeks with them in a locality so 
near that fine picturesque coast—there it goes in chace of my former 
dream of seeing them on the edge of the highlands of Scotland. Sic 
transit gloria ! 

Mrs. Hill and the young people have done wisely to take an indemni¬ 
fication beforehand in North Wales, for what is sacrificed in the way of 
nature’s fine things by the surrender of Cornwall, perhaps the final sur¬ 
render in respect to residence ; for if you get reconciled to London, there 
is circuit for you after circuit, at only two or three miles distance at each 
remove, and still again and again the same round, till you get up to the 
patriarchal age of old Wesley himself. Adieu therefore now to coasts, 
hills, rills, and everything of that kind; henceforward it is to be, streets, 
smoke, fogs, and the Thames. But I hope the benefit to friend John will 

compensate for the difference.1 never did or could like that bar- 

business for him, but as it is apparently his fate, he will be very pro¬ 
perly desirous to bring all attainable qualifications into convergence upon 
it. How it would please me and vex you, if he should, after all, turn 
Methodist preacher, or tutor of a Methodist academy—if Baptist, better 
still; instead of going to lose his conscience, and perhaps morals too, 
among a set of the most unprincipled fellows on the earth. 

.... There is little to be said about myself. For the last two or 
three months I have lost almost wholly, and I am now convinced finally, 
the use of one ear, from no known or conjecturable cause, and without 
any sort of pain. A cough which has continued as much as eight 
months, became, five or six weeks since, so serious and even menacing 
in its symptoms, in consequence of a little cold, and again another little 
cold, with no due care taken about a remedy, that I have been compelled 
to take the character of a valetudinarian and patient during the last 
month, have rarely gone out of the house—have not ventured to Bristol 
for more than a month—have taken physic, a blister on the chest, and 
so forth. The evil is much mitigated, but not thoroughly renioved. 
What is called “change of air” is strongly recommended, and accor- 







92 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


dingly I am going next week, if there be any tolerable alteration of this 
dolefully wet weather, on a short visit to Worcester, and thence proba¬ 
bly to my medical brother-in-law at Bourton, Thence I must come to 
have the meeting with Dr. Marshman, who will probably not be in this 
part of the country afterwards. His affair having occupied me during much 
the greater part of the year, during which 1 should otherwise have been 
about other work, and earning a little money in that way, which I want 
as much as my neighbors; so that I am most miserably in arrear with 
certain doings which I ought to have been about, and had pledged my¬ 
self to do my best to perform long since. I am therefore under every 
kind" of obligation to try to do what I can during the descent of the year, 
after having been defrauded of the best and most genial part of it. Be¬ 
sides the usual grievance and distress which I always experience in any 
mental labor, there is the painful addition, that latterly my eyes are in 
such a state of weakness and uneasiness, that I can read very little, and 
am all the worse off for even thinking. Every day, and almost every 
hour, I am forcibly reminded, that life is fast coming toward the dregs— 
and will, ere long, come to its conclusion. At the same time, I have 

less of the former complaint of the stomach.This impossibility 

of reading enough to be of any use (from the state of my eyes), exacer¬ 
bates my mortification for the folly of having accumulated so many now 
useless books. 

.... While writing the above, with the intention of despatching this 
sheet by to-day’s post, I was somewhat chagrined by a note introducing 
a gentleman of the Caledonian kirk, a stranger from the neighborhood of 
Stirling, but luckily a mortal foe to all episcopacy; a man of large in¬ 
formation, of large travelling, and modest to the last degree. I have 
been much pleased with him, and now return to my writing. 

. Hall was lately saying that there must infallibly be, ere long, 
a great alteration in the constitution of the conference ; among other 
things, that the laymen will either obtain an introduction into it, or will 
do their best to blow it up. All this notwithstanding, I declare to you 
once again, that I am always glad to hear of the enlarging extension of 
the Methodists, from my uniform conviction that (with no small discount 
for harm) they are on the whole doing great good. 


CL. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Sept. 13, 1828. 

It would be an irrational presumption to reckon on it, that we and our 
two inestimable female associates shall all be found on this earth at the 
end of the six years next to come. Within that period past there has 
gone away, from each of our little families, one individual that was with 
us, but whom we shall see no more till after we shall also have passed 
the dark frontier. Tlie mind sometimes makes an effort to pass that 




LETTERS. 


93 


limit in thought, and look into the mysterious region, to descry the 
manner of existence of those who did so lately live with us, and in our 
own manner. But we are compelled to retire from the precincts of that 
scene, in hopeless inquisitiveness and unabated ignorance; but this igno¬ 
rance will not last long ; and meanwhile, how delightful is it to believe, 
that those our lost ones are in a far happier state than any of us in¬ 
habitants of the dust. 


CLT. TO JOHN PURSER, JUN., ESQ. 

Sept. 30, 1828. 

My dear Sir,— I am just returned from an excursion of rather pro¬ 
tracted duration in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, &c., recommended 
for the purpose of trying to escape from an obstinate and ill-omened 
cough. A day or two before I set out I began a letter to you, which I 
reckoned on sending before I went, but several matters came in the way, 
and the paper was laid aside, in an expectation of being back here in 
little more than a fortnight, instead of, as it happened, nearly three times 
that length of absence. A letter, received at Worcester from my wife, 
informed me that a young gentleman, your son, had been here. I re¬ 
gretted having thus been prevented seeing him, and still more so, on 
now hearing her description of the intelligent and manly character appa¬ 
rent in the transient visitor. 

But your son, a young man of mature age,—I seem to be unable to 
realize the fact; all my ideas fix on yourself, as a youth very much in 
minority of age, and I cannot carry on my imagination, through the suc¬ 
cession of events from that period, so long past, to the present state of 
your condition. 

My dear friend, your shrewdness will have perceived, how I am con¬ 
triving to slide into the letter, without accounting first for the long 
silence since I received yours, which, with your father’s, gave me the most 
animated gratification. But for explaining—that cannot be, that is quite 
impossible, unless you could (and you cannot) shape to yourself a con¬ 
ception of such a disease of procrastination, as you never saw exempli¬ 
fied, in any equal degree, in any person whom you can have had within 
your habitual and prolonged observation. To be sure it is a moral dis¬ 
ease, but it has clung to me with all the tenacity of a natural and consti¬ 
tutional one. 

I will, however, repeat, with what a strong emotion of pleasure I re¬ 
ceived the communications from Dublin, a pleasure which I certainly 
intended to express without delay. Some mortification I acknowledge 
mingled with the pleasure. The warm kindness of my old friends had 
the effect of giving edge to my self-accusation; and this, in truth, however 
perversely, operated somewhat concurrently with the tendency ot the dis¬ 
ease of which I have been complaining; but now T am recognized as an old 



94 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


friend, and will gratefully take my position accordingly. I will try to 
place myself, as now an old man, near you, now a man in middle age, 
but appearing to me, whether I will or not, and however I may strive to 
change the aspect and situation, in the image of a youth of fifteen, no¬ 
thing less than seeing you will set me right; and as my remembrance 
of you, and of our diversified intercourse at that time, are among the 
most distant of the things that remain with me from the long past, I am 
certain I should, in the event of seeing you, have to combat with a very 
strange confusion of ideas, and that the one person would very obstinately 
for a long time, be iwo; indeed, perhaps always. It would, however, be 
very interesting to me to hear from you very minutely, as means of iden¬ 
tification, the long history of the progress of events during the blank in¬ 
terval of so large a breadth of time. I should recount, to see whether 
or how much you recollected in coincidence with me, a number of the 
particulars, the adventures, the debates, the juvenile fancies, which stand 
representative in my mind, of the young friend of a third part of a cen¬ 
tury back. 

It would be highly interesting to me to see your family, and you in 
the midst of them, and Mrs. Purser, whom I so well recollect as Miss 
Allen, who did not much like me, at which I am far from wondering; 
and, indeed, think she was considerably in the right, for certainly I was 
a queer article in those times. I can recollect what an indifferent figure 
I cut in divers respects and situations. I should be much amused to re¬ 
call some of them with her, if she had any marked remembrance of 
any of them. But, my good friend, neither did she, at that time, much 
like you; and it would have seemed an extremely improbable event, that 
you should aver have become united in the most intimate relation of 
life. I was pleased at hearing, last summer, that a thing so unlikely 
had actually come to pass, and am happy to believe I may most justly 
congratulate you both ; and I most cordially wish you may very long 
contribute to each other’s happiness. 

It is gratifying that you appear to have cause for so much satisfaction 
in viewing your family; when I see so many parents, on every hand, 
afflicted with apprehension and sorrow on account of their children; 
insomuch that I have acquired a feeling which (tacitly perhaps) con¬ 
gratulates parents on the early removal of their children by death. This 

is not from any painful experience of my own.My eldest, who 

would now have been a young man of about nineteen, died of consump¬ 
tion two years since ; and left the consolation of an assured hope that 
he is removed to a higher, happier region. He had previously been, 
though with very minor faults, an object of considerable solicitude, in 
consideration of what a world of temptation he was (as it was mistak¬ 
enly presumed) entering into ; a world quite dreadful in its aspect on the 
character and destinies of young men. He departed in humble, pious 
hope, and I have never wished him here again—have felicitated him 
rather on his final escape from all sorrow and sin. 




LETTERS. 


95 


It would be a high gratification to me, to hear those opinions of men 
and things which you have been forming and maturing throughout the 
more than thirty years since I saw you: it would be curious and inter¬ 
esting to see how far our general or particular notions, preferences, or 
aversions, would coalesce, after our having so long passed through dif¬ 
ferent trains and scenes of observation and experience. From the early 
acuteness and intelligence, of which I have so perfect a recollection, 
I am sure you cannot have failed to be a keen observer and independent 
thinker, whilst a vast variety of moral phenomena have passed before 
your view. Your early sentiments were forming to a cast not greatly 
varying from my own ; and I cannot help flattering myself that we should, 
in many points, find ourselves at this time in agreement, even after so 
immensely long a dissociation. Have you taken a considerable or a 
lively interest, in political events and subjects ? if so, you have sufTered 
a long course of grievous mortifications, especially in relation to 3 'our 
own country ; and in what a fearful state is that country at this hour! 
I cannot be sure, but am strongly inclined to presume, that you think 
the whole system of the government respecting it, bears a character of 
absolute infatuation ; that a “lying spirit” has prompted and directed all 
their councils: and with such a ministry as we have now, for a judg¬ 
ment sent on the nation, it is gloomy, and, indeed, quite dreadful, to look 
forward to the course and issue of things in Ireland. 

You have lately had, in Dublin, Dr. Marshman.That Seram- 

pore affair has, during the last twelve months, occupied my time and 
attention to a very self-sacrificing extent; and, I am afraid, to very little 
useful purpose. 

.... After reading the principal of these opponent publications, I 
have to say, that my opinion is modified in some points. For one thing, 
as to the alienation or hostility between the seniors and the junior mis¬ 
sionaries ; the testimony thus produced of the feelings of so many of 
these latter does lead me to believe that the fault was not so wholly on 
their side as Dr. M. represents, and certainly thinks. At the same time 
it is to be considered that all this is their own story, that they went to 
India with no proper information, and with expectations which were 
necessarily disappointed, and that many of the circumstances stated in 
accusation are such (I know that some are such) as the seniors could so 

state as to turn the accusation on the juniors.Yet I admit the 

impression that in some degree, not possible to be precisely assigned, 
there was cause to complain 6 f the manner in which the seniors exer¬ 
cised, in some particulars, their rightful ascendency. Another thing to 
be admitted is, that the coalescence, the unanimity of sentiment among 
the three seniors, has not been so perfect and entire as had been sup¬ 
posed, while substantially and generally^ they have, beyond all question, 
coincided in sentiment, purpose, and plan of proceeding. But how care¬ 
lessly, indiscreetly, and sometimes inconsistently, they have each and all 
(the three) written to their friends, at various times ! But these dis- 



96 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


crepancies are the produce of a ransack of (I have heard) 700 letters 
and papers. What might not be the result of such a ransack for such 
an exclusive purpose, of any three associated men’s writings during 
nearly thirty years’ co-operation ? Another point which these documents 
show, somewhat more plainly and strongly than Dr. M. had stated, is, 
that in the indigested and undefined state of their early notions of their 
situation, relatively to the society, they had not come to a distinct and 
positive principle of independence till after a very considerable advance 

of time.But their solid ground on this question is, that from 

nearly the beginning they acted independently in all manner of ways, and 
in very important and even hazardous matters, in which they practically 
held themselves under no control of the society, not seeking either its 
assistance or its counsel. But these are minor matters, which, how¬ 
ever, as I foresaw, would be labored against the Serampore men, to keep 
out of sight the great substance and mass of their achiev'ements and 
merits, namely, that they have most indefatigably labored for nearly 
thiity years for the Christian service, that they have faithfully expended 
all they have acquired in every way in and upon that service, and that 
finally they have nothing for themselves—excepting still to labor, 
through the remainder of life, whether through “ evil report ” or “ good 
report.” .... 

.... But for this obtrusive and endless topic, I should have said 
something in exj^ress answer and acknowledgment to my old, excellent, 
and always dear friend, your father. . . . He and I, I do certainly be¬ 
lieve, are the same men that we were almost an age since; but doubt¬ 
less we should, if we met, feel mutual and strange wonder to see the 
operation of time. We shall not long now remain under that opera¬ 
tion. Eternity is beginning to throw on us its mysterious gleams, 
through the growing shades of our evening life. 

I wish to express—I will not say my respects, but my friendly regards 
to your wife, the Miss Allen (it certainly must be so) of long since 
times.It is affecting information that my ol 1 friend and com¬ 

panion, H. Strahan, is no more. 

Yours, most truly and cordially, 

J. Foster. 


CLII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

December 15, 182S. 

.... For the evenings, I have been a prisoner all the autumn, and 
must be all the winter—rigorously so. A cold and cough, confirmed 
from time to time, last winter and spring, has been partially removed by 
the whole fine summer; during which I took more than a month’s ex¬ 
cursion, in parts of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire, 
under the most favorable auspices possible of weather, hospitable friends, 
and care, avoidance of all evening parties, and exemptions from public 





LETTERS. 


97 


exercises. The cough at one time had very ill-omened symptoms, as 
evidently betraying an affection of the lungs. I am strictly ordered to 
keep out of the evening damp and cold—never go into the town in tho 
evening, not even to hear Hall—and take every sort of care. The 
cough is very much diminished, and I expect that continued care will 
remove the remainder. Within the last half-year I have lost (so nearly 
wholly, as to amount to quite the same thing) the heaiing of one ear,, 
without any known cause, without pain, but in such a manner as renders 
it certain it will always remain lost. And all my poor teeth are gone, 
but three or four that are soon to follow. Otherwise I am in much bet¬ 
ter health than two or three years since. 

Good wife is in the same feeble, ailing, but patient way. I could not 
tell you in any moderate number of words, or pages, or sheets, the state 
of the Seram pore affair. That affair has been sadly and utterly con¬ 
suming my time and attention for the whole past year—a vast number 
of labored letters to write, &c. &-c. 

Hall has had a whole year of most miserable suffering, under his old 
complaint. In other points of health he seems tolerably well, and no 
decadence in mind. 


CLIII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

[On the death of Mrs. Hill.] 

Stapleton, December 26, 1828. 

What shall I—can I—say to my dear old friend, on whom the hand 
of God has been so heavily and mysteriously laid ? This has been the 
question with me from day to day, while each returning morning 1 have 
been resolving not to let the day pass without an attempt to speak to him 
in terms of commiseration; and still a constant feeling of utter impotence 
has frustrated my resolution. To Him alone who has afflicted, it belongs 
to impart the merciful influence to sustain you under the overwhelming 
calamity. And I pray him to enable you to yield yourself up to him in 
resignation, and repose on him for support. May all that you so firmly 
believe, and have so often cogently taught, of the consoling efficacy in 
the divine goodness, be realized to you now, in your season of deepest 
distress ! It is all true—you know in whom you have believed—and that 
he is all-sufficient to console his servants, in the most painful and me¬ 
lancholy scenes in which his own sovereign dispensations may place 
them. He does not bring them under oppressive trials to desert them 
there, and leave them to their own feeble strength. He will not leave 
you ; he can sustain you—and I trust he will give you power to lay hold 
on him for strength. 

From your letter previous to the last, I could not help admitting some 
dark and painful forebodings ; insomuch that the external signs on your 
last gave a strong intimation of what it was to tell me. Yet I had, till 

VOL. II. 8 




98 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


receiving it, indulged some little hope that our dear friend might be re¬ 
called from the fatal brink, to remain a companion and blessing to her 
family. But the sovereign authority, the voice which angels and saints 
obey, still called onwards. She was appointed for other society. She has 
now entered into it,—in a scene whence all her warm affection for those 
she has left behind (an affection, we may well believe, inextinguishable 
by death) would not move in her happy spirit a wish to return. In that 
society no doubt she has joined, for one dear and happy associate, her 
admirable son who had gone before, as if on purpose to congratulate her 
on her arrival. If you could know the heavenly rapture of those mutual 
felicitations ! “ Too happy,” you would say, “ too happy there for me to 

wish those beloved beings were, even for my sake, again in a world like 
this. Rather let me patiently go on my journey, deprived of their loved 
companionship, till I shall obtain it again, where I can never lose it more.” 
How soon the few fleeting years of our life will be gone ! Oh that they 
may, through the discipline of the divine spirit, be a process to prepare 
us to mingle in the felicities of our departed, sainted friends, and gratefully 
exulting in the presence of Him who has exalted them from this sinful 
world to his own blessed abodes ! I have lived for several years in the 
apprehension of being visited by such a dispensation as that under which 
you are suffering, and there has been a degree of consolation in the 
thought, that I am too far advanced in life for the deprivation, if it should 
be inflicted, to be a loss of very long duration. 

By this time, what was mortal of our dear friend has been consigned 
to its resting-place in darkness and silence ; and I can pensively s}’Tnpa- 
thize in the profound musings in which your spirit is drawn to follow the 
immortal part. Oh, what is the transition ? Whither is that immortal 
essence gone ? In what higher manner does it live, and know, and exert 
its faculties no longer involved in the dark tabernacle of dying flesh ? 
Our departed friend does not come to reveal it to us. But enough to know 
that it'is a deliverance from all pains, and weakness, and fears—a deliver¬ 
ance from sin, that most dreadful thing in the universe. And it is to be past 
death—to have accomplished that one amazing act which we have yet 
undone before us, and are to do. It is to know what that awful and 
mysterious thing is, and that its pains and terrors are gone past for ever. 
“ I have died,” our beloved friend says now, with exultation, “ and I 
live to die no more ! I have conquered through the blood of the 
Lamb.” .... 

I am, dear sir, yours, with sincerest wishes for the only divine and ef¬ 
fectual consolation to be yours, J. F. 


CLIV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

January, 1829. 

My dear Sir, —^Your mournful letter was from a place of scjoum 
which had not been suggested to my imagination.I have no doubt 




LETTERS. 


99 


of your experiencing at Liverpool the most affectionate sympathy, .... 
but I have some fear that the very remoteness from the scene of calamity 
may but augment the painful difficulty of your returning to your station 
—to your station of service, for to the same residence there can be no 
question or practicability of returning.Wherever you fix or re¬ 

move, it is affecting to consider what a changed condition divine Provi¬ 
dence has appointed to accompany you. In every former movement and 
station during a very long lapse of time, you have been accompanied by 
one of the dearest and most affectionate friends that any mortal was ever 
favored to possess. Whatever else you found untoward, whoever else 
might be unamiable or ungracious, she was ever good and kind. It is now 
appointed to you that no longer herself, but her memory is to accompany 
you—a memory ever dear and cherished, present every day and hour, 
presenting her image as still smiling tenderly upon you, but, therefore, 
still telling you what you have lost. But yet this will not be all that the 
beloved vision will tell you. It will represent to you that she herself 
still lives; that she has ceased to live with you, only because her heavenly 
Father required her presence in a higher abode; that she waits for you there, 
admonishing you to be, meanwhile, patient and zealous in accomplishing 
your appointed term of duty and trial, as she has accomplished hers ; and 
fhat every day and hour of this your faithful progress brings you nearer 
to a happy and eternal re-union. While you can no longer live for her, 
may you the more live to that supreme and eternal Friend to whom and 
with whom she now lives, more happily and nobly than the highest attain¬ 
ment of any of his servants while yet sojourning on earth. You will 
often fall into profound and earnestly inquisitive musings on the state of 
being into which she has made the mysterious transition. What is it to 
have passed through death, and to be now looking upon it as an event 
behind —an event from which she is every moment further removing; 
when so lately, when but a few days since, she was every moment, as 
all mortals are, approaching nearer and nearer to it ? What must be 
the thoughts, the emotions, on closely comparing these two states, under 
the amazing impression of actual experience ? How many dark and most 
interesting and solemn questions (as they are to us—as they recently were 
to her) are now, to her, questions no longer! And would her happy 
spirit wish it possible and permitted, to convey to you and her children 
some part of the knowledge which has thus, since she left you, come 
upon her like the rising sun ? No ; she sees it not proper; that it would 
not be for the welfare of those she has left behind and still loves: but 
delights to anticipate that the time will come for them to attain this glo¬ 
rious and marvellous light, like her, and with her. And if it may be 
presumed that, while assuredly nothing that is taking place on earth can 
cause her pain, it may consist with the economy of that state, that she 
shall derive pleasure from what is in progress in the scene she has left, 
nothing—except the general triumph of her Redeemer’s cause—nothing 
will administer more joy than her husband’s and her children’s advancing 



100 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER.' 


on the way to heaven. To them, her children, I trust this affecting event 
will be made a powerful confirmation and enforcement of all their best 
convictions and resolutions. It is thus only that such an irreparable loss 
can be compensated to them; so that their loss shall be not only her gain, 
but theirs also. 

When you shall have recovered composure enough to resume public 
labors, the activity and frequent exercise, with its varieties of place, will 
be beneficial to you. At present it may often seem to you that you can 
never again have spirit and vigor of mind enough for such activity; but, 
though pensive and desolate feelings will often invade you, I trust that 
the compelled exertions of your office will contribute to break the continuity 
of your sorrow, and aid the softening effect of time; while religion, above 
all, will impart the consolations which you will often have to assure 
your hearers that the afflicted must seek and will find, in that best 
resource. You will have to assure them—and may you have the happy 
experience of it—that the divine mercy and support are all-sufficient. . . . 


CLV. TO JOHN EASTHOPE, ESQ. 

February 24, 1829. * 

At this one turn, I have the greatest delight in adverting to the politi¬ 
cal business in your St. Stephen’s chapel. The dictators there have for 
once been dictated to. They pretend indeed to kick at the imputation 
of fear, of acting under dire compulsion, and all that; but the Catholic 
Association knows better. But never mind either motives or pretences, 
so the good thing be done. How baffled are all our calculations ! We 
deplored Canning’s extinction; whereas Canning declared he would not 
help the late claims of the Dissenters; and it seems doubtful whether he 
could in a Whig ministry, even making the Catholic business “ a cabinet 
measure,” as they call it, whether he actually could have carried this 
most important point. And now, here is a driving, dashing fellow of the 
sword, from whom we expected nothing for Ireland but a Brunswick 
manifesto and a host of bayonets—and the thing is done at a stroke. 
Here too is Peel, as staunch as any rock or stock against the whole 
affair—and a complete Tory ministry, adverse to political liberty in all 
shapes and places—here we have them doing the very thing which all 
the bigots and anti-reformists were exulting to have them in power again 
from the confidence that they would be sure never to do. 

Still I am somewhat in fear till I see the business over, that there will 
be, to please the poor creatures who are afraid lest we should be all burnt 
alive, some invidious and ungracious drawback, under the name and 
notion of “ securities ”—a most ridiculous notion and term—as if there 
could be any securities but those consisting in the good-will of the Irish 
people, and the wisdom, equity, and strength of the Protestant nation and 
government. You will see some fine battling, fine canting, fine ratting, 



LETTERS. 


101 


and fine mortification. For once you will have the delight of seeing the 
power on the right side, so new and exhilarating a circumstance after you 
have so many times heard a good cause (this one and others) vigorously 
advocated with the desponding, sullen reflection all the while, that it was 
all lost labor. 


CLVI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, March 25, 1829. 

... You have probably by this time come to something like a settled 
general plan ; and when you have done so, we shall be greatly interested 
to know how it bears. To all the places of your successive residences 
during the last twenty and more years, your thoughts will revert with 
the pensive, painful consciousness that none, not the most agreeable of 
them, would be the same to you again, if you were there; that there 
would be wanting one interest, the sweetest and dearest (except piety) 
that you enjoyed in each of those scenes. How many vivid remembrances 
would places and objects raise and press on your mind! I have often 
imagined to myself how you would feel (and indeed, how I myself should 
feel) at the cottage and each spot in the vicinity of that favorite Little 
Haven, where has so often been seen, and where would be seen no more, 
that countenance S 9 kind, so benignant; where at moments there would 
be almost the expectation of hearing—but there would not be heard— 
that voice, expressive of every gentle and amiable sentiment, uttering 
some affectionate wish, or some considerate suggestion, for the pleasure 
or advantage of each friend in the little company; with a generous dis¬ 
interestedness, a forward readiness to sacrifice her own convenience, 
which has always struck me as pre-eminently conspicuous in the 
character of her who is now gone to a congenial region and society—a 
region and society where her gentle and generous spirit is emphatically at 
home. That “ she is here no more,” will be the affecting and painful 
thought in every place you can visit where she has been your loved 
associate ; but then, let faith take up the words, and tell where she is, and 
where she will affectionately wait to receive those she has left behind. . . 


CLVII. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

Jlpril 30, 1829. 

There is little to be said about the Serampore affair. . . . My estimate 
of the main and substantial merits of the case remains unchanged. The 
modification of opinion which I have been led to admit, on apparently 
sufficient evidence, is, that Dr. M.’s family and domestic arrangements 
have latterly taken somewhat too much of a stylish cast, through an 
indulgence of the young people’s taste for the genteel. Not that I believe 
■ hat this has gone at all beyond what is vastly common among our good 

/ 




102 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTEU. 


people, and good non-cons., in this country, whose means would admit of 
it; but the. thing is, that a quite different standard is, and resolutely will 
be applied to a mission family, avowedly acting, and really having acted, 
on a principle of entire self-devotement to the Christian cause. In con¬ 
sideration of the use that will infallibly and very effectually be made of 
any even small deviation from this high principle, by the enemies, I have 
urgently inculcated on Dr. M. the wisdom of excluding at his return, any 
real excess of show and style.”* 


CLVIII. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

December 5, 1829. 

My dear Sir, — .... The last time of my being at Worcester, I 
left you with very irksome feelings, on account of having declined even 
so much as one instance of compliance with the friendly requests for a 
public service of any kind. Not exactly that I reproached myself for 
not having complied, but an indistinct mingled mortification respecting 
it altogether, as what would appear an unfriendly thing to you personally ; 
for as to the ministers, my acquaintance had been so small as to make 
it a diflferent case from what it would be with some old familiar friend, 
like Coles, with whom I had had a sort of social qonnection for many 

long years continuously.It may seem strange enough, and indeed, 

no good symptom of character, that I should feel such extreme repug¬ 
nance to such services. And I am perfectly aware that more candor 
than I could expect from any one but yourself and Mrs. Stokes, would 
be requisite for allowing any validity to my explanation;—that, having 
been so long out of the practice of preaching, I have come to feel very 
great inaptitude, except for some such thing as an off-hand talk in 
some of our village meeting-houses—that, from infrequency in part, it 
is in such places alone that I could feel myself in any degree at ease in 
such off-hand work—that, having next to no memory at all, it is in vain 
for me to make any preparation, beyond a few written sentences, of 
which, as suggestions, I am to make just what I can at the time, and 
that I can make nothing of them except where much at my ease from 
the pitch and quality of the auditors—and that, in addition, I have great 
difficulty, from failure of sight for near objects, to make out even the 
largely-scrawled lines on my paper—that, therefore, I have everything 
against me for making anything of the exercise but a cause of mortifi- 

*“This is matter not reducible to any strict rules of propriety. Our 
well conditioned and genteelish non-cons would spurn at any such pre¬ 
scriptions and interdictions; but the high and devoted character assumed 
by the Serampore fraternity, and the very invidious circumstances in w'hich 
they were placed, rendered it an important and evident law of prudence, to 
maintain as much as possible of even a puritanic simplicity and unworld¬ 
liness in their economy.”— Mr. Foster to the Rev. J. Fawcett, April 24, 
1830. 



LETTERS. 


103 


cation to myself, and, as an inevitable consequence, to my friends among 
the auditors. I have spoken the literal truth about preparation and 
memory. Even in the Bristol lectures some years back, my preparation 
did not go one inch beyond the bare written scheme, which might have 
been read in perhaps a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. I was 
long enough in writing those bare schemes—often as much as three 
days; but even then, under very considerable responsibility, I never 
could do anything at all in the way of what may be called filling up. 
That would have far more than doubled the time, and besides, such end¬ 
less labor would have been nearly useless, as I was absolutely certain 
that I should retain no recollection, to any purpose, of what I might 
have so prepared. But the consequence was, the constant hazard of 
failure, which sometimes did take place in a most mortifying degree. 
So that between such toil and such liability to failure notwithstanding, I 
was glad to make an end of the service. The truth is, that it costs me 
—or rather icould cost me—more labor than any other preacher alive, 
to do that which, in one sense, I am able to do, able, that is to say, sup¬ 
posing all circumstances favorable. All this being thus matter of un¬ 
pleasant experience, I have fully declined all preaching but such little 
village work as I have mentioned ; and even that is now of rare occur¬ 
rence, in consequence of there being a settled minister now at the place 
to which I used oftenest to go. In Bristol I believe I shall never preach 
again. I have told the friends so, in such honest terms, that I am now 
never applied to, except that I was asked to make one sermon at Broad- 
mead, during Hall’s absence, which I refused. 


CLIX. TO JOHN PURSER, JUN., ES(i 

1830. 

.... 1 do not know whether you saw much of Dr. Marshman in 

his visit (there were, I think, two visits) to Dublin.Uniformly, 

and in all places, we have observed him indisposed in an uncommon de¬ 
gree, to magnify or dilate upon his own services. I never knew a man 
who had done half so much who would admit to it half so little. I was 
struck with the fact, and have often mentioned it, that days and weeks 
might have passed away in conversational companies (in which the sub¬ 
ject of Serampore was not formally, and by express requisition of the 
party, made the matter of discourse), without any person’s being made 
aware that Dr. M. had ever done anything in the least remarkable. He 
would talk largely of India in ail its relations, but what he had done 
there would uniformly be the very last thing of which he would speak. 
Often, in such companies, he would not speak of it at all, unless in 
answer to some direct jnquiry. When he did speak of Serampore, as 
led to it formally and necessarily by the object and intention of the 
meeting, it was always in the most moderate terms as respecting him- 





104 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


self. He habitually merged himself in the partnership—“ the union 
and in all ways, and on all occasions, without the least sign of affecta¬ 
tion, gave the precedence to Dr. Carey. One of the most marked cha¬ 
racteristics of pride is high-toned contempt, or indignant reaction to 
imputations, reproaches, depreciations, &c. Now I never saw so little 
of this in any other mortal man, who was the object of censure, injustice, 
and abuse. The contrary temper in him was so remarkable, that I used 
to be’ curious to discover wherein it consisted ; how much of it was 
a Christian patience and quietude, and how much an unsensitiveness of 
natural constitution. I thought there must be much of the latter, from 
the uniformity, nearly, of the phenomenon. I have myself used more 
rough language to him, and quite in serious driving earnest, than I ever 
did to any other man in all my life, and have been amazed how he could 
take it all without bristling into anger, an effect which I never witnessed 
but in one instance ; in which I doggedly, and, I believe, fiercely, tra¬ 
versed and contradicted him, in a particular explanation. I have often 
thought exactly this—that hejiad not pride enough to give him a dignified 
and manly hearing, to make himself he treated with anything like the 
due deference and respect. Ward I know, and Carey I believe, would 
have allowed no such liberties as were taken by Dr. M. without reaction, 
and with perfect impunity. Really, I was sometimes ashamed for his 
tameness, as letting him down from the proper degree and tone of manly 
dignity and respectability. And often enough I wondered, reflectively, 
how it could he that I could, involuntarily, be so divested of respectful 
feeling, and of the appropriate manners and language, toward a man, 
whose excellence and practical services I rated, with the most perfect 
conviction, so eminently high. And a chief cause I still found to be, 
his want of a certain manly assumption, which partakes of the noli me 
iangere, and the nemo me impuni lacessit. 

There are other things in the case certainly. His manners are some¬ 
what uncouth ; his theological language is of the humblest old school; 
his intellect is not vigorous or acute ; and he has, in regard to the affairs 
and persons in a state of hostility, a dread, carried to excess, of direct, 
bold, uncompromising conflict. To effect things by management; to 
carry a purpose without firmly avowing it; to persist in a design (for 
he is very pertinacious) under a silence which might have led opponents 
to imagine he had relinquished it; to assign but in part his reasons for 
it; to endeavor to frustrate an opponent’s design in the quietest way 
possible ; to raise an obstacle from circumstances, rather than to make 
a direct, bold opposition or attack ; to wear out the time, instead of 
putting an affair promptly to hazard ; to prefer, in all cases, caution to 
boldness ; to temporize sometimes to a fault; such I can well believe to 
have been, in India, the policy which has brought on him such a violence 

of censure and opprobrium.Such is the policy which Dr. Carey 

himself is cited as having (in a letter of old date) denominated “ crooked,” 
but with no emphasis of disapproval, as is manifest from his firm, unal- 



LETTERS. 


105 


terable attachment to his colleague from first to last. He did not like 
this policy, it was not quite agreeable to the plain straightforwardness 
of his own character ; but he did not at all regard it as vicious in prin¬ 
ciple, only an unlucky peculiarity of character in a man who was upright 
in his motives and objects ; a man who was devotedly and disinterest¬ 
edly faithful to the great cause, and whose services to it were important, 
incessant, and indefatigable. In that very same letter of Dr. Carey, the 
paragraph describing the said “ crooked policy ” was immediately fol¬ 
lowed by an expression, in strong terms, to this effect:—“ notwithstand¬ 
ing any such faults in my colleague, my best wish for the mission is, that 
it may never want a Marshman.”* 

.... But now after all, as to Dr. M., am I pretending wholly to justify 
him ? no; for one thing, I do not like that same which I have adverted 
to, as what has been denominated “ crooked policythough Lassuredly 
believe, that his prevailing motive in practising it, has been to serve the 
good cause, by avoiding collisions and explosions, and getting the work 
quietly forward. I believe too, that in some critical conjunctures, mis¬ 
chiefs and dangers have been thus evaded, when a different manner of 
proceeding would, in all probability, have incurred them. For another 
thing I am convinced, by a comparison of testimonies, that .... he has 
latterly allowed, or more correctly not prevented, as much as he might 
and should, the growth of a certain stylishness and affectation of genteel 
life in his domestic establishment. But, not to say how difficult parents 
are everywhere finding it to dictate discretion and taste to their young 
folks, and shape their habits to a primitive or philosophic standard, espe¬ 
cially if any of them should be of the utmost use and necessity in the 
establishment; not to insist on this, I believe the show and stylishness in 
question and in accusation, to be nothing more; than what is practised or 
aspired to by very many of our good Christian people, who are in what 
are called handsome circumstances. The unfortunate thing is, that this 
genteel style of life, being admitted into an establishment which was long 
retained on a system of rigorous economy, and constituted on an avowed 
and permanently obligatory rule, of strictly “ devoting all to God”—obli¬ 
gatory, that is to say, from voluntary pledge and vow—has afforded an 
occasion (vastly exaggerated in the representation) for making the charge 
of a dereliction of the original missionary spirit, and a degeneration into 

worldly character and habits.But now, after all, look at all this ; 

admit that he has the weakness of such an overweening partiality for his 
family, as to allow them in some things which he had much better have 

* “ Brother Marshman’s excellences are such that his defects are 
almost concealed by them; and I believe him to be one of the firmest 
friends the mission ever had ; and I hope the mission may never stand in 
want of one like him.”— Dr. Carey to Dr. Ryland, April 11, 1818. “ In 

point of zeal he is a Luther, and I an Erasmus.”— May 24, 1810. “ Bro¬ 

ther Marshman, who is naturally a little tortuous, but than whom a more 
excellent and holy man does not exist.” .... May 30, 1816. From the 
same to the same. 




106 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


restrained; and that the tenor of his policy has not been frank, told, and 
manly (while, as I feel the most perfect conviction, sysiematically and 
honestly intended for the best), what a trifling deduction is this from the 
meiit of more than a quarter of a century of indefatigable labor for the ser¬ 
vice of Christianity, prosecuted in the oppressive climate of India too, with 
no view to either emolument or fame ! Think of one item, the translation 
of the whole Bible into Chinese, as but a very minor portion of the quan¬ 
tum of his disinterested labors. I can express the more confidently my 
exceedingly high estimate of him from the circumstance, that he is not a 
man to my taste, as to matter of taste. He is not a man of taste, senti¬ 
ment, imagination, discrimination, play and reach of thought, free specu¬ 
lation, strong understanding, literary cultivation, or manly cast of deport¬ 
ment ; it is his substantial, faithful, Christian excellence, on which my 
estimate and complacency rest. 

.... Believe me, my dear Sir, I am vexed, ashamed, and I know not 
how many more words I might add, to have been led into this tediousness 
of observation. I have no knack of despatch. And besides I confess I 
did wish to contribute something in aid of what I thought a correct 
opinion in a man of whose judgment I have reason to think so highly as 
of yours, in reference to a matter which is evidently of some importance, 
as affecting the character and interests of what will be by far the most 
memorable missionary adventure of our age. I can have no manner of 
interest about it, but simply as a well-wisher to a good cause, under pre¬ 
sent adverse circumstances. It has consumed as much (all put together) 
as a whole year of my waning life, and while I had many reasons (a pe¬ 
cuniary one not excepted) claiming that I should be very differently occu¬ 
pied. Mine has been a great and gratuitous sacrifice. 

No future letter to you will be filled with anything so foreign to friendly 
correspondence. I could not adjust matters so as to allow at this time 
the visit to Dublin, which I am willing and gratified to promise myself 
at a more favorable season, if life continue. I was pleased, not at all 
surprised, at your coincidence with me in opinion about dissenting ordi¬ 
nations, and also about a widely different matter, tbe principles of Wel¬ 
lington’s policy in the measure so favorable to Ireland. One cannot help 
suspecting that one of his chief motives was a wish to have the military 
force of the country more disposable for aid (under possible circum¬ 
stances), to support that infernal INIahomedan domination in the east of 
Europe, which one earnestly wishes—all mere political calculations out 
of the question—to see crushed by the Russian invasion. Under sanc¬ 
tion of that old humbug, “ the balance of power,” and to present some 
eventually 'possible inconvenience to our trade to the Levant—that is to 
say, reduced to plain terms, some pecuniary disadvantage—our govern¬ 
ment would not scruple to sink the nation a hundred millions deeper in 
debt. But Ireland again; who would have thought that the session of 
Parliament, commencing with the beneficial political measure, would pass 
oft* without one particle of anything done for the internal relief and im- 


LETTERS. 


107 


provement of your miserable population—some plan for cultivating the 
waste land, or providing for the ejected cottagers ? . . . . Unfortunate 
Ireland, and England too, in having, from generation to generation, a set 
of statesmen and a court who care really nothing for the public good, 
any otherwise and further than as it may serve the production of reve¬ 
nue ! Still the world, our part of it included, is destined to mend. The 
sovereign Ruler over all has declared so. And the present extraordinary 
diffusion of knowledge, accompanied, we may hope, by augmentation of 
religion; the mobility so visible in the state of the world, the trembling 
and cracking of parts of the old fabric—the prostration of some of the in¬ 
veterate tyrannies ; these are surely signs that the changing and melio¬ 
rating process is at least beginning. When our race arrive at such a 
state as prophecy unquestionably predicts, what will they, can they, think 
of the preceding ages and of ours ! 

I am gratified by all you express of the happiness you enjoy in yom* 
family, and especially in the merits and valuable assistance of your eldest 
son, whom I am again sorry not to have seen when he was here. I hope 
that all these satisfactions will increase with their and your advancing 
life, and that they will be largely shared by my old friend, for I will call 
her so, and should be extremely pleased and interested to see her again 
as now under the character and name of Mrs. Purser, to whom I request 
you to express my very kind regards and best wishes for her health and 
happiness. 

And then there is my old, ever remembered and estimable friend, your 
father, who, I dare say, is pleased with you all together. What I am a little 
sorry for is, that I fear he has deserted our poor old Swift’s Alley. Is 
there no inducing him to return; provided, I mean, that your people there 
should behave themselves well under the new settlement you are going 
to make; I would be remembered to him in the strongest terms of most 
friendly, grateful, and unalterable regard. 


CLX. TO JOSEPH COTTLE, ESQ. 

[In answer to a letter animadverting on his language respecting the established church.]* 

March, 1830. 

My dear Sir,—A llow me to beg you, first to accept my most sincere 
thanks for the kind spirit and intention of your letter; and next, to take 

* Bristol, March, 1830. 

My dear Sir,—To renew the subject on which we lately conversed, and 
had the misfortune amicably to differ; namely, the church of England. 
It would be inconsistent in me, as a dissenter, not to admit, that our reli¬ 
gious services are more conformable with the primitive church than the 
establishment; but the liberty of private judgment which we exact from 
others, we must also grant. I dislike intolerance, in whatever form it dis¬ 
plays itself. There are wise and holy men who deem the church of Eng¬ 
land the concentration of excellence. On the contrary, I take it to be, 




108 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


in perfect good part, a few sentences, which respect for my excellent 
friend, and (perhaps I may think) justice to myself, may seem to require 
of me. I remember the conversation to which you refer, and remem¬ 
ber too, that I was stimulated to a certain something like vehemence 

not “ a milk-white hind,” but Dryden’s “ spotted panther,” yet still a sec¬ 
tion of the “ true church.” .... 

Will you allow one of equal years, but very inferior pretensions, to sug¬ 
gest for your calm consideration, whether you do not extend your strictures 
on the church, sometimes, rather too far ? I am no advocate for frippery 
and popish decorations, and ordinances; immense revenues to dronish 
bishops, while the inferior clergy are often worse paid than mechanics, 
although they are in general as well educated, and possess tastes as refined, 
as their diocesans. Pluralities also, I am willing to allow, are carried to 
an unjustifiable extent, to the great prejudice of meritorious curates. And 
I must, in justification of myself, as anon-conformist, express, among other 
things, a decided objection to the burial service ; to that part of the church 
catechism, where the sprinkling of a few drops of water, perhaps by an 
irreligious clergyman, converts, as it is supposed, the recipient into a 
“ member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of 
heaven.” This baptismal regeneration is not more opposed to scripture 
than it is to common sense. Apostolic succession, also, is regai’ded even by 
some dignitaries of the church, with as much disfavor as it is by myself. 
But all this, and more, may be admitted without invective, in which there 
is no argument. Excuse me in saying, I do think you err in this respect. 
Are we not Christians ? and must we not exhibit the mind of Christ, who, 
“when he was reviled, reviled not again,” and by which spirit his disci¬ 
ples are to be distinguished ? . . . . 

You seem to consider the establishment as combined with unmitigated 
evil. I, on the contrary, regard it, with all its faults (by which I shall 
certainly please neither party), as productive of a great preponderance of 
good; nor, on the whole, do I ever desire to see the day, when there shall 
be no establishment; or rather an establishment of Independents, Metho¬ 
dists, or Baptists. Neither of them would bear their faculties more meekly 
than the present hierarchy. Scholars and gentlemen, as the generality of 
clergymen are, although many of them may not have attained to a know¬ 
ledge of the truth, in its highest sense, they still soften the charities of life, 
and being scattered through the thinly-peopled districts, convey a know¬ 
ledge of Christianity, often by their sermons, but always by their prayers, 
where, otherwise, it is to be feared, there would be heathenish darkness; 
so that in the present condition of society, I cannot but regard the church 
as producing more good than harm. With these views, it is always pain¬ 
ful to my mind to hear harsh and indiscriminate reflections passed on the 
establishment. It is engrafted in my very nature, not to do unnecessary 
violence to the feelings, and even prejudices, of any man. The same bias 
of mind makes me restrain severe animadversions on all bodies of men, as 
well as on individuals, where silence does not compromise conscience. 
You have known me for more than a quarter of a century, and did you ever 
hear me speak censoriously either of an individual, or a body of men ? 

.... The injunctions, to “ love each other with a pure heart fervent¬ 
ly;” to “ speak evil of no man ;” are. not the mere garnish of religion, but 
were designed to enter into the substance of our creed, and become the 
germinating principle of our lives. 

I am sure you must admit that every vicinity offers abundant scope for 
energies a thousand times more potent than any we can command, in dis¬ 
countenancing vice, and fostering all the channels of benevolence ; why 
therefore should Christians dissipate energies in detracting from each 
other, which should be reserved for more legitimate objects ? . . . . 



LETTERS. 


109 


which I soon afterwards became sensible was considerably out of place, 
for that I had been under the influence of an essential mistake. I was 
assuming- (having never been apprised of the contrary) that my friend 
was really a Dissenter on principle, .... and therefore I was struck 
with what appeared to me, a very great inconsistency in hearing your 
language respecting the established church. I was not fully made aware 
ol my error till near the end of the dialogue, when you avowed your wish 
for the permanence of that establishment. 

Now I mean no disrespect to that class of the community (many among 
them excellent Christians) who are dissenters only as a matter of habit, 
from the accidents of association, locality, preference for a certain mode 
of preaching, &c.. &-c. I mean no disrespect when I say that this is 
not at all what has been always understood by dissent, as a matter of 
systematic principle. Dissent, as argued and practised by the whole 
school of our most venerated teachers and examples, has been founded 
on the plain principle, that making religion a part of the state, is anti- 
christian in theory, and noxious in practice. With consenting voice they 
would have denied any one to be a Dissenter who did not hold this doc¬ 
trine, and desire, in obvious consistency, the abolition of all secular reli¬ 
gious establishments. Latterly, all this seems to have been forgotten,— 
very much from the want of instruction, and consequent want of thought, 
about the real nature and reason of dissent. But I am of the old schcol, 
—at the same time, not caring very much how little the people under¬ 
stand about the theory of the matter, provided religion and practical dis~ 
sent be making progress. 

The fundamental principle of dissent is, that the religion of Christ 
ought to be left to make its way among mankind in the greatest possible 
simplicity, by its own truth and excellence; and through the labors of 
sincere and pious advocates, under the presiding care of its great Author; 
and that it cannot, without fatal injury to that pure simplicity, that cha¬ 
racter of being a“ kingdom not of this world,” be taken into the schemes 
and political arrangements of monarchs and statesmen, and implicated 
inseparably with all the secular interests, intrigues and passions. It is 
self-evident it must thus become a sharer in state corruptions, an engine 
of state acted on, and in its turn acting with, every bad influence belong¬ 
ing so almost universally to courts, governments, and ambitious parties 
of worldly men. It might beforehand be pronounced infallibly, that this 

Pray excuse any stray expression which may appear defective in respect, 
and believe me to remain, 

My dear Sir, most truly yours, 

p.S.The largest and best part of nonconformists desire, I doubt 

not, to live on friendly terms with Episcopalians, and willingly concede 
to them, wnat they so zealously require for themselves—the exercise of 
private judgment, being quite satisfied, if they behold in them a resem¬ 
blance to their divine Lord, which can alone comport with universal holi¬ 
ness. This forms the true bond of union. 



110 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


unhallowed combination must result in the debasement of religion, and 
in mischief to the best interests of mankind. But from this presumption 
d priori, turn to the matter of fact, as exhibited through the long course 
of the Christian era. I have latterly been looking a little into ecclesiastical 
history, at different periods; and should, from what I have seen there, 
have acquired, had it been possible, an augmented intensity of detestation 
of hierarchies and secular establishments of religion. There is the 
whole vast and direful plague of the popish hierarchy. But placing that 
out of view, look at our own Protestant establishment. What was its spi¬ 
rit and influence during the long period of the sufferings of the Puritans ? 
What was its spirit even in the time of Queen Anne ? Then follow it 
down through a subsequent century. What did it do for the veople of 
England? There was one wide settled Egyptian darkness; the blind 
leading the blind, all but universally; an utter estrangement from genu¬ 
ine Christianity ; 10,000 Christian ministers misleading the peop.e in re¬ 
spect to religious notions, and a vast proportion of them setting them a 
bad practical example. When at length something of the true light be¬ 
gan to dawn,—when Whitfield and Wesley came forth,—who were their 
most virulent opposers, even instigating and abetting the miserable peo¬ 
ple to riot, fury, and violence against them ? The established clergy. At 
a later time, who were the most constant systematic opposers of an im¬ 
proved education of the common people ? The established clergy. Who 
frustrated so lately. Brougham’s national plan for this object ? The cler¬ 
gy ; who insisted that they should have a monopoly of the power in its 
management. Who formed the main mass of the opposition to the Bible 
Society for so many years ? Did one single dissenter so act ? No; the 
clergy. Who, lately, did all they could, by open opposition or low intrigue, 
to frustrate the valuable project for education in our own city ? The 
clergy. Who were the most generally hostile to the Catholic emancipa¬ 
tion, undeterred by the prospect of prolonged tumult, and ultimate civil 
war, ravage, and desolation in Ireland ? The clergy. What is, at this 
very hour, the most fatal and withering blight on the interests and hopes 
of the Protestant religion in that country ? The established church.* 

In our own less unfortunate country there are, it is computed, not 
much less than 16,000 clergymen of the establishment. Now what 

* “ It is in vain to deny, that the church of England clergy have poli¬ 
tically been a party in the country, from Elizabeth’s time downwards, and a 
party opposed to the cause which, in the main, has been the cause of im¬ 
provement. There have been at all times noble individual exceptions- 
nr. the reign of George the Second, and in the early part of George the 
-Third’s reign for instance, the spirit of the body has been temperate and 
conciliatory; but in Charles the First and Second’s reign, and in the period 
following the revolution, they deserved so ill of their country, that the 
dissenters have at no time deserved worse; and therefore it will not do 
for the church party to identify themselves with the nation, which they 
are not, nor with the constitution, which they did their best to hinder from 
ever coming into existence.”— Dr. Arnold, Z.7/e and Correspondence, 
vol. 1., p. 418, 3d edit. 


LETTERS. 


Ill 


proportion of this number do you think probable are men of sincere, 
serious piety ? That it is vastly a minority would be acknowledged by 
such a man as Wilberforce. But from what one has heard and seen in 
very many places in England, 1 think one in four would be an ultra 
charitable conjecture; indeed a quite improbable conjecture. What is 
the staple doctrine received by the people from three-fourths (probably 
more) of their spiritual guides (of the church) ? It is that good works, 
and a very limited sort and proportion of them, will secure their future 
happiness. How many thousands of those teachers are denouncing as 
fanaticism and delusion, the very principles which you and I account of 
the very essence of the religion of Christ! Two of the latest informants 
I have met with respecting the state of the church, in two widely asun¬ 
der places, describe, that in one of those places the clergy are almost 
constantly declaiming from the pulpit against meihodism; that in the 
other, the clergy (including several justices of the peace) are remon¬ 
strating against a too precise regard to the sabbath, one of them (at a 
place which I know) encouraging the boys and young fellows to play at 
various games just in front of his house, on the Sunday. And yet this 
clergyman-justice is a respectable, moral man. This slight series of 
notices afford but a faint and meagre hint of the large and awful indict¬ 
ment against the established church. And that indictment is, by the 
whole school of the able advocates of dissent on principle, charged in 
this form ; namely, that such are the natural effects of a secular church 
establishment,—not accidental evils of an institution fundamentally good. 
And this should, I think, be as evident as any possible instance of cause 
and effect. Consider, what is the patronage of the church ? For one 
large portion, it is in the hands of the state, of the ministry—men most 
commonly ignorant and careless of religion, and only consulting secular 
and political interests. It is in the private hands of great lords and 
great squires of colleges and corporations. No small proportion of it is 
a matter of direct traffic in the market, like farms or any other commo¬ 
dity. So many thousand pounds for a “cure of souls!’’ Consider, 
again, that young men (a vast majority of those who enter the church) 
enter as on a profession or trade, and a thing which places them on a 
genteel footing in society. The church is the grand receptacle, too, for 
secondary branches of the upper sort of families. Many latterly are 
from the army and navy. Consider, that personal piety is not, nor by 
the nature of the institution can be, any indispensable prerequisite. 
Who or what is there to require any such thing, or to judge of any such 
thing ? The candidate passes through a few formalities, and it is done. 
And if the parishioners receive a man who is most evidently destitute 
of any such qualification—receive him as their instructor, consoler, and 
example—they have no remedy. They must be content; they cannot 
remove him; and the church, and even the evangelical clergy, censure 
them if they presume to go to hear instead a pious and sensible preacher 
in a meeting-house in their neighborhood. We affirm, then, that this 


112 


Lit'E OF JOHN FOSTER. 


fearful mass and variety of evils consistently, and for the main part ne¬ 
cessarily, result from the very nature of an established church ; and are 
not accidental and separable; and that therefore the thing is radically 
and fundamentally bad, and pernicious to religion. If one hears talk of 
correcting it, making it a good thing by “ reform ”—one instantly says. 
How correct it ? Can you make kings, ministers of state, lord chancel¬ 
lors, to become pious and evangelical men ? Can you convert the whole 
set of patrons—lords, baronets, squires, corporations ? Can you work 
such a miracle in Oxford and Cambridge, that they shall fit out no young 
gents for the church, but such as give proofs of personal piety; or 
make the bishops such overseers that they shall allow none to go into 
the fold but such as bear the evident qualifications for the shepherds of 
the flock ? Can you secure that, when advowsons are advertised for 
sale, none but religious men shall buy or bid for them ? Even if all this 
were not essentially and flagrantly impossible,—if it might be brought 
about some time, —I would say. How long, meanwhile, are the people, my¬ 
riads and millions of them, to be left to be misled in the most momentous 
of their interests by multitudes of authjjrized teachers, who teach them 
not the gospel ? How many of these multitudes and myriads can we 
contentedly resign to live and die under the delusion, that a little mid¬ 
dling morality (honesty chiefly), with the aid of the Christianizing 
sprinkle of water, the confirmation, and the talismanic sacrament at 
last, will carry them to heaven ? There is, besides, something strange 
and rather ludicrous in the notion of correcting what is itself appointed 
to be, and assumes to be, the grand corrector. There is a class of per¬ 
sons highly authorized, ordained, and officially appointed, to instruct, 
illuminate, and reform the community; the community, wiser than their 
teachers, are to pity them, instruct them, get them reformed, and then 
go to them for “ instruction and correction in righteousness !” A curious 
round-about process, even if it were practicable. 

Now, my dear sir, all this being so (and how feeble a representation of 
the state of the case !), it is, I confess, with amazement that I hear you 
say, while still professing yourself a dissenter—that you desire the per¬ 
manence of our church establishment, so that if its standing or falling 
depended on your will, you would fix it to stand. What! pronounce for 
the permanence of an institution, which is at this very day, by an 
immense majority of its ministers, teaching the people (the little that it 
does teach) such doctrine as, if you were to hear it at Broadmead, you 
would earnestly protest against, as contrary to the New Testament, and 
fatally pernicious to the souls of the hearers if they believed it! What! 
pronounce for the continuance of a most awful mischief to the best 
interests, on the calculation that perhaps in some future age (when ? 
when ? when ?) there may be a reversal of those causes which render 
the institution what it is ; when statesmen shall be pious Christians, and 
colleges, wealthy patrons, and bishops, shall acquire the spirit of Christ 
and his apostles! 


LETTERS. 


113 


But it will be alleged, there is a very material reformation already ; 
there are many evangelical, and in all respects, excellent ministers in the 
church. This is true ; at the same time, a place like Bristol is no fair 
specimen of the whole state of the church, through the nation; in many 
grand portions of which such clergymen are scattered few and rare. 
There are some religious patrons, and latterly a few truly religious 
ecclesiastics have attained the bench;—as the brothers-, in conse¬ 

quence of one of them having been highly approved as tutor in the 

family of-, and-, from the accident of having a brother in the 

ministry ; which brother-, as I heard Hughes tell, had a violent 

contest with his colleagues for the point, and threatened to desert them' 
if they did not yield it. 

But now, these genuine Christian ministers in the church ;—I dare, in 
the first place, put the case respecting them in a much stronger shape 
than I shall, or need, abide by. In speaking of other kinds of institu¬ 
tions, if it were shown that though there is a considerable measure of 
good in it, yet there is, and in all reasonable probability is likely to be for 
an indefinite time to come, more harm than good, we should not hesitate 
to say it had better be abolished, even at the cost of losing that good. 
Now, this is the case of the church. While a considerable number are 
teaching the doctrines, and in the true spirit of the doctrines, which you 
yourself regard as the very vitality of the Christian religion, an immensely 
greater number are teaching in a way that disavows those doctrines — 
teaching a doctrine which in very many cases expressly contradicts and 
explodes them, and in others, does virtually and in effect the same thing; 
satisfying the minds of the believing hearers with what is much more 
accordant to the corrupt mind, and betrays to a fatal consequence. It is 
a melancholy thing to be striking a balance upon ; but have we not hero 
a plain case of more evil than good ? The inference is obvious, accord¬ 
ing to any rules we think it rational to judge by in other cases. As to 
any pleading that though the ministers do not teach the evangelical 
truth the prayers do, I am sure the allegation is utterly futile. From a 
vast number of observations, and the statements of numerous deponents 
who have had much larger experience, I am certain the form of prayer is 
utterly unavailing to impart, even in the faintest degree, the evangelical 
sentiments, the mere notions, I mean, when the ministry is of a contrary 
tenor. Even //. Mare once owned this to Lowell, and professed to won¬ 
der at it. But there is no need to put the case thus. I revert to what I 
said in the debate with you ; that is, “ Would the downfall of the establish¬ 
ment he the loss, the silencing, of the truly religious ministers What ! 
would they not take the trouble to preach to the people, if the church, as a 
mere national and government institution, were abolished ? Is that all 
they care about religion and the people’s welfare after all ? If it be, 
they are enjoying vastly more credit than they deserve. As to their sup¬ 
port, not a few of them are men of property; and for the rest, the much 
greater number of course—how are the dissenting ministers supported ? 

VOL. II. 9 



114 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


The church property, besides, being in the supposed case applied to the 
national service, would greatly alleviate, on the general scale, the diffi¬ 
culties of support, if it were alleged that, in their capacity of ministers 
of the national establishment they have a certain character of authority 
in the people’s apprehension, which contributes to add weight to their 
ministrations, beyond what they would have as mere ministers, 

I should answer, that this is a true but unlucky argument; for that this 
circumstance equally gives weight and authority with the people to those 
who are not teaching genuine Christianity—who are the far greater 
number. 

Well then, supposing the church as a secular establishment to be sud¬ 
denly prostrate in ruins, what is the consequence ? First, we have all 
the truly evangelical, pious, and zealous ministers still 'preaching, and 
many of them much more widely and frequently than at present they can 
or dare do ; and next, we have the instant relinquishment and silence of the 
many thousands of clergymen who care nothing about the ministry, but 
as a profession or trade. Now, my dear sir, do answer it to yourself, with 
unprejudiced simplicity, whether this would not be a most important 
advantage gained to the cause of religion. Answer this in honest 
candor. 

It is true, there would at first be a strange confusion, in consequence of 
the vacating of so many ill-occupied pulpits. I)ut this would fast abate. 
If the people really cared about attendance at church, they would be 
sure to liave the Scriptures and prayers read (the only good thing they 
had before), and any respectable reader could do this. For another thing, 
the truly valuable ex-ministers could and would very greatly extend, and 
multiply, and diversify their labors. A number of the most respectable 
of the won-evangelical clergymen would be disposed to continue their 
services till gradually replaced by something better. And there would 
be a great and rapid increase of the number of that secondary and 
uncanonical kind of preachers, who are already doing such ample good 
over the country. 

You plead hard for liberal and brotherly union with the good men in 
the church. Is it possible you are unaware that nine in ten, perhaps a 
much greater proportion, of the evangelical clergymen would do any¬ 
thing sooner than second your motion ? Is it not a matter of the most 
common observation and notoriety, that they, in general, affect an ultra 
high-churchism (from a most cowardly motive) and recoil from any 
friendly contact with dissenters ? The Bible Society is almost the only 
thing in which they have been willing to come into anything like tem¬ 
porary amicable communication ; and that has very generally been done 
in a manner to imply condescension; and for doing so, they have received 
from dissenters a sad quantity of fulsome and sycophantic adulation. . . . 

It is a valuable circumstance of alteration that there is so considerable 
a number of serious ministers latterly in the church. My idea is, 
that the divine Being is determined that a corrupt institution shall be 


LETTERS. 


115 


compelled, spite of itself, to do some good before its fall. That it is in no 
slow progress towards its fall, I take to be a matter of obvious calcula¬ 
tion. If the progress of {'practical) dissent shall continue in the same 
ratio as during the last twenty years, the church will, in no very long 
course of years, be left in such a minority of numbers, and therefore 
weight and importance, in the community, that the state will begin to 
think how far it may be worth supporting. That it is coming in peril is 
sounded from both sides of the hierarchy. The zealous evangelical cler¬ 
gyman, Acaster, in the recent publication which has made considerable 
noise, in earnestly urging a grand reform, has asserted that unless the 
church shall be very greatly changed from its present inefficiency and 
corruption, it will in twenty years more be annihilated. And who is to 
reform it ? Such men as the Duke of Wellington and the archbishops ? 
That it is mended in the degree we have lived to see, is virtually owing 
to the dissenters. That it has been compelled to abate its persecuting 
spirit and policy is owing to the vastly improved intelligence of the age, 
—an effect, which from the same cause, has taken place in some parts 
of the popish world—as in France. 

But, my dear sir, I shall long since have utterly tired you. I am sorry 
to have so occupied your time and my own. But you have put me on 
my defence. 

The dissenters’ system (as far as they can have anything that can be 
so named) is simply to teach and preach religion to such as choose to be 
taught, forming voluntary societies, and in all ways and senses support¬ 
ing themselves, in point of expenses and everything else.It is the 

very manner in which Christianity was originally propagated in the 
world. How else should or can it be propagated ? It is an immensely 
different thing to have a secular establishment, shaped, richly endowed, 
and supported by the state—a profane and profligate king acknowledged 
as head of this church, a power in the government (often a most 
irreligious set of men) to decree the doctrines and observances of 
religion—a set of wealthy and lordly archbishops and bishops—the insti¬ 
tution—constantly made an engine of state—furnished with a clergy 
to whom personal religion is no prerequisite, and many of them signing 
articles which they do not believe—constituted in a way to produce am¬ 
bition, sycophancy to power, and arrogance towards the people—to say 
not a word of the vast and horrid history of persecution, the principle of 
which is inherent in such an invention, and which has made the hie¬ 
rarchy about the blackest spectacle in the retrospect of the Christian 
era. How easily we can set out of view this inherent tendency of an 
established hierarchy, when we live in times and in a country where ^ 
knowledge, and the theory and spirit of freedom (together with the ab¬ 
solute necessity imposed on the church of being moderate toward so very 
large a division of the community), have wearied this persecuting spirit 
into abeyance and comparative quietness ! 

Allow me to observe, that, in the company of church-people, I avoid, in 
mere civility, such expressions as you have criticized: in your friendly 


116 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


society, there can rarely occur any particular occasion for using them. 
But in the little companies of absolute dissenters that one now and then 
falls into, one should feel it very strange to be under a law inhibiting the 
very strongest oxpressions to be applied to an institution from which— 
what do we dissent for, but because we judge it anti-christian, unscrip- 
tural and corrupt ? 

I remain, my dear sir, yours. 

With the most cordial and friendly regard, 

J. Foster. 

P. S. It is a remarkable sentence which has been recently quoted in 
more than one publication, from that determined supporter of church 
bigotry and state despotism, Lord Clarendon, “ That of all classes of men 
he had ever had to do with, the clergy were the most narrow-minded in 
their mode of judging of affairs.” 

We can testify, that up to this hour they are, as a body (unless per¬ 
haps the lawyers may be their rivals in this quality), of all classes of men 
the most obstinately averse to every sort of public improvement, when 
anything that they can call innovation is the condition of it. It is pro¬ 
bable that all the argument and eloquence in the nation would not avail 
to persuade the predominant portion of our clergy to consent to an omis¬ 
sion or alteration, of here and there a palpably exceptionable expression 
in the liturgy ; as for instance, that which affirms over the graves of the 
most wicked men the certainty of a happy resurrection ; or that by which 
the Almighty is informed (what he could not otherwise know) that 
George the IV. is a “ most religious king not to mention that which 
precisely and unequivocally declares that an infant, under the act of 
throwing a few drops of water in its face, is made a Christian. As to 
this last, what wretched and dishonest quibbling there has been (by 
Biddulph, and many others of the evangelical clergy) to form some other 
meaning to expressions of which the sense is as clear as daylight !”* 


* “ I . . . . would appeal to any man of common understanding, from the 
most unlettered peasant to the ablest in the land ; or to any jury of twelve 
honest men, be they Dissenters or be they Romanists; or the first twelve 
one might meet in the streets of London, and submit to their judgment, 
whether it is possible for a doctrine to be couched in plainer or more positive 
words ; whether there can be the shadow of a doubt that the Church of Eng¬ 
land holds the doctrine of baptismal regeneration ; whether the denial of 
baptismal regeneration be not as clearly contrary to the doctrines of the 
Church of England as the maintenance of transubstantiation, or the Pope’s 
supremacy; and whether it is not one of the most astounding facts in religious 
controversy, that ministers of the Church of England should, Sunday after 
, Sunday, use this service, should baptize infants brought to them, and then 
call on the congregation to join with them in thanking God, for that it hath 
pleased him to regenerate each child, and yet hold the opinion, either that 
the child has not been regenerated at all, or that his regeneration is hypo¬ 
thetical ! ! If the maintenance of baptismal regeneration be orthodox, the 
dernier must be heretical, or at least the setter forth of erroneous and 
strange doctrines. The question is come to a direct issue; the church can- 


LETTERS. 


117 


CLXI. TO DR. STENSON. 

[Extracts from various Letters.] 

Let us gratefully hail the gleams that come to us from a better world, 
through the gloom of declining age, which is beginning to darken before 
us, and give all diligence to the preparation for passing the shades of 
death, confident in the all-sufficiency of Him who died for us, to emerge 
into the bright economy and the happy society beyond. 


Indeed I would regard as something better than enemies, the visita¬ 
tions that give a strong warning of the final and not remote beating 
down and demolition of the whole frail tabernacle. A salutary impres¬ 
sion made on the soul, even through a wound of the body, is a good 
greatly more than compensating the evil. In the last great account no 
doubt a vast number of happy spirits will have to ascribe that happiness 
to the evils inflicted on their bodies, as the immediate instrumental cause. 


Let us take the admonition, to do what little we can for our great 
Master before the night shall come. That it is so little, is one of the 
things in which we are required to be submissive to his sovereign will. It 
is part of the doom of our fallen nature—respecting that miserable de¬ 
bility and corruption of which you can find no man to sympathize with 
your opinions and feelings more emphatically than I do, and the more so 
the longer I look at it, and especially have my own personal experience 
of it. 

How unwelcome are these shortening days ! The precursory intima¬ 
tions of winter even before the summer itself is gone, and how almost 
frightfully rapid the vicissitudes of the seasons, telling us of time, the 
consumption of life, the approximation to its end. That end; that end ! 
And there is an hour decreed for the final one. It will be here—it will 
be past. And then—that other life! that other world! Let us pray 
more earnestly than ever, that the Jirsl hour after the last may open upon 
us in celestial light. 

How strange and mortifying that progress in personal religion is so 
difficult! that it should not be the natural, earnest, and even impetuous 
tendency of an immortal spirit, summoned to the prosecution of immortal 
interests! 

It often occurs to meditative thought, what an instant cure it will be 
for all the disorders at once, when the frame itself is laid down, and the 
immortal inhabitant, abandoning it, will care no more about it; will seem 

not contain both doctrines, the advocates of one or other must give way.”—> 
The real Danger of the Church of England. By the Rev. W. Greslkv 
M.A., Prebendary of Lichfield, London, 1S4G, pp. 19, 27 




118 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


to say, “ Take all thy diseases with thee now into the dust; they and 
thou concern me no more.” 

How very conditionally it is that firm, uninterrupted health is really a 
blessing. And what a testimony it is against our miserably perverted 
nature, that a real and eminently great good is so much in danger of 
proving an evil. 

It continually surprises me to think, how little that is remarkable 
occurs (so as to be known) where a hundred thousand human beings, all 
busily intent on their purposes, are existing within the circuit of a very 
few miles. How monotonous is the human condition ! In fancy, we 
might have supposed that among such a multitude of living, thinking, 
acting creatures there should be a continual succession of something 
to excite surprise, instead of an endless common-place of existence. But 
we see business just going on the usual way; sin of all sorts, constant 
to its customs; religion but little changing its aspects and operations. 

As to religion in this country, and the world at large, how passionately 
one could long to see some great movement, some striking and prodigious 
changes, some events answering to the figure of “ a nation born in a day.” 
It is disconsolate to see, in this respect, the year end nearly as it began; 
a progress almost imperceptibly slow ; such a dead weight on millions 
of souls; such a vast measure of means consumed in producing so little 
effect toward the one great end. One envies the people of those future 
times when a new order of powers and progress will be unfolded on the 
earth. 


.... Have you any notion that the world is just on the point of 
prodigiously mending, or that there is any glimmer of the millennium on 
the horizon ? There is truly little enough of anything of the kind to be 
seen; but old as I am, and misanthropic, and sceptically given, and all 
that, I am really willing to hope that some considerable good may not be 
far off, though it is likely to come by a very rugged and costly process. 


CLXII. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

Stapleton, near Bristol, April 24, 1830. 

My dear old Friend, —I was hesitating whether to look at the date 
of your letter; I usually avoid, if I can, in self-defence, seeing that part 
of a letter which I am beginning to answer, because it is almost sure to 
meet me in the character of reproach. I have not, however, been lucky 
enough to escape catching sight of the date of yours, and it is just four 
months since. It gratified me much, both as a proof that friendships of 
youth may continue alive to far advanced age; and as conveying many 
interesting particulars of information from the scene of my early life and 
interests. But how few, how very few, of the persons of my acquainUnce 



LETTERS. 


119 


in that scene could be found in it if I revisited it now ; I should have to 
read the names on tombstones of most of those with whom I familiarly- 
conversed torty years since. My memory is bad to the most -wretched 
degree; and no small sign of its being so is, that 1 have a much less 
power of recollecting circumstances of early life than I have observed to 
be quite usual in persons of my age. As to things comparatively recent, 
I experience even more than the usual treacherousness of the memory of 
a person in age, particularly in respect to names. In meeting persons 
with whom I have been, or even am at present, familiarly acquainted, I 
am frequently at a loss for the name; so that, unwittingly asking a 

husband,—“ How is Mrs.-,” or a wife,—“ How is Mr.-,” I am 

baffled, stop short, and am driven at last to say—“your wife,”—or “the 
good man,” or “ good lady at home.” This has happened to me many a 
time, with persons whom I knew as well as my own door or my old hat. 

The worst of it is, that it makes reading very nearly useless to me; I 
retain but a very dim trace of anything I read, even striking matters of 
fact; and as to matters of thought, some time lately I read on perhaps 
100 pages of some book or other (I forget what), without becoming 
aware, till 1 came to some remarkable name, or some such thing, that I 

had read all those pages but a few iceeks before .Have you had any 

taste or fancy for graphical works, such as splendidly illustrated and 
picturesque books of travels, antiquity, and the like ? This has been my 
taste quite to a fault; a fault I mean in reference to pecuniary means. 
.... Pray, do you often preach ? I have suffered an almost entire 
deposition from that office, by physical organic debility as the primary 
cause, and, as an accessional one by choice, from having felt the great 
inconvenience and laboriousness of doing occasionally, what I have been 
so long out of the practice of; so that, for a long time past, I have 
declined wholly our city pulpits, and never go higher than an easy, 
unstudied discourse now and then, in one or two of the neighboring 
country villages, where there is no stated ministry. Mr. Hall is in high 
physical vigor (for the age of 66), while often suffering severely the 
inexplicable pain in his back, of which he has been the subject from his 
childhood. Ilis imagination (and therefore the splendor of his eloquence) 
has considerably abated, as compared with his earlier and his meridian 
pitch, but his intellect is in the highest vigor; and the character of his 
preaching is that of the most emphatically evangelical piety. His 
friends have now surrendered all hope of his doing anything more in the 
way of authorship; they have ceased to remonstrate with him on the 
subject, but most deeply deplore this lack of service to the Christian 
cause, when they consider that he might have produced half a dozen, or 
half a score (the more the better) of volumes of sermons, which would 
have filled a lamentable chasm in that province of our literature, and 
would have been decidedly, considered in their combination of high 
qualities, the foremost set of sermons in our language. 

Do you take any more interest in political matters now in later, than 




120 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


you were inclined to do in earlier, life ? Very great things have been 
done in recent times. America set free—Greece—a humiliation of the 
Mahomedan empire—the Catholic emancipation—and a great part of the 
world put in a state of mobility; ominous, all may hope, of prodigious 
and accelerated changes. 

How is my old friend Mrs. Fawcett ? On meeting her I should look, 
with eager inspection, to recognize a countenance than which no one is 
more indelibly impressed on my memory. Give my most friendly regards 
to her, with congratulations that she has fought so gallantly through the 
toils of life. 


CLXIII. TO B. STOKES, ESQ,. 

Stapleton, June 16, 1830. 

My dear Sir, .... One of the constellation which is shedding 
such lustre on our dark world (Dr. Okely*) has withdrawn, or is with- 


* The Rev William Okely, M.D., was the third son of the Rev. Francis 
Okely (formerly of St. John’s College, Cambridge), a Moravian minister at 
Northampton. He was born at Bedford, Jan, 25, 1762, and educated first 
at Fulnec, and subsequently at Niesky and Barby. On completing his 
studies, he spent a short time at Christianfield in Denmark, and then re¬ 
turned to Fulnec in the capacity of teacher, but soon resigned, in conse¬ 
quence of holding sentiments which were incompatible with that office. 
After spending two years with a surgeon at I^edford, he removed to Edin¬ 
burgh, where he prosecuted the study of medicine and took the degree of 
M.D. During his stay there, he was highly respected and distinguished 
for propriety of conduct and character, which he always attributed to his 
early education among the United Brethren. In 1797 he was chosen Phy¬ 
sician of the General Infirmary at Northampton, and while there, published 
a sceptical work entitled “ Pyrology.” Shortly after he became a firm be¬ 
liever in Christian truth, and immediately published a recantation of his 
“ Pyrology.” 

*• The author,” he says, “ was himself an unconverted man, to whom, of course, all that 
relates to the transcendental part of creation could not but appear confused and unintel¬ 
ligible, and the conduct and language of such as were real followers of Jesus, weak and 
enthusiastic. By the merciful preservation of God, however, he had continued an honest 
man, not pretending to know what he did not know ; bold enough to assert what he did 
know, and vain enough to imagine that what he knew was all that could be known. Sup¬ 
pose such a man tolerably tinctured with the letter of Christianity, but neither understand¬ 
ing it, nor seeing any beauty in it, except the moral precepts and human character of its 
Author ; at the same time educated in retirement, and ignorant of the world; suppose such 
a one placed in a sphere calculated for extensive observation of mankind, and resolved to 
judge of the belief of men from their conduct, and not from their public professions;—the 
picture such a person would draw of man, would, I believe, be nearly that contained in the 
Pyrology. It is the picture of a natural man, the slave of Satan, dead in trespasses and 
sins, without God and Christ in the world, and hastening to endless perdition; it is the 

picture of a rational brute ; it was his own picture.The immediate sources whence 

most of the author’s mistakes are derived, are first, a presumptuous reliance on the strength 
of his faculties, and extent of his information ; secondly, a want of attention to the detail 
of the gospel history. The worst consequence of my former doctrine is, that it cuts off the 
doctrine of the atonement—that main pillar of Christianity.’' 

On renouncing his sceptical views, Dr. 0. solicited re-admission to the 
Brethren’s church, and in that communion occupied various stations as 
minister or director of schools. He was distinguished for logical acuteness, 
».nd the fearless investigation of truth. His pulpit discourses were marked 




LETTERS. 


121 


drawing, his share of the lustre. I saw him lately in Bristol, whither he 
is come in a state of extreme physical debility, from which his friends do 
not anticipate his possible recovery. He is a Moravian of much know¬ 
ledge and mental sharpness; at the same time a very worthy man. Dr. 
Chalmers is to preach this evening for the Auxiliary of the British and 
Foreign School Society, as he did the day before yesterday, at the open¬ 
ing of a capital new meeting-house, built wholly at the expense of Mr. 
Hare the great floor-cloth manufacturer, and our most munificent pro¬ 
moter of religious especially, but of all good designs; which he does, 
apparently, at the expense of far less self-denial than it appears to cost 
man}!' of our rich professors of religion (especially such as have made 
their fortunes from nothing by industry) to contribute in a vastly less 
proportion. Dr. C. retains without the smallest diminution, his simple, 
friendly, unassuming character and manners. He has with him a de¬ 
lightfully pleasing woman, in tlie character of his wife, with the addition 
of his eldest daughter, and two female relations who are on a trip to 
Scotland for health. 

.... There is very little to be said about anything here. As to 
matter of health, there is no great variation, except that a cough which 
I have entirely now got rid of after two years’ duration, has been replaced 
by some other aflection, which is probably of a still more fixed character; 
that is to say, a disordered circulation, a frequently intermitting pulsa¬ 
tion, from some unknown and probably organic cause. It is a disorder 
which suflers great temporary augmentation from very slight occasions, 
a little sudden, or laboriously hard, corporal exertion, such as w’alking 
up a hill, or hastily or eagerly going about anything, or from any uneasy 
kind of mental exertion. A long, stout evening’s talk is a great mis¬ 
chief : as to anything like preaching, I believe, I am never to attempt it 
again, in any place, little or great. Each medical friend enjoins careful 
avoidance of all such things, as certain to aggravate the internal cause, 
while not pronouncing the affection to be exactly of a formidable and 
ominous character, provided I be systematically careful. I have been 
cupped and afterwards bled, but without any sensible effect. I am never 
more to climb a Welsh hill, not to say mountain. As the people say, I 
look passably well, I guess some of them suspect a little affectation—but 
they are quite mistaken if they do: lam not, at the same time, suffering 
any pain. I a little envy you the sight of so much Cambrian scenery as 
you wfill pass over, and in sight of, tw^o or three weeks hence; but if I 
were in the midst of it, I should liave the mortification of feeling myself 

by originality, and rendered highly interesting by bringing the results of 
his study of human nature to bear on the characters and facts recorded in 
the scriptures. Besides the Pyrology, his only avowed publications w'ere: 
1. A letter to Robert Southey, Esq., &c., on his Life of the late Mr. John 
Wesley, and especially that part in which he treats of the Moravians. 2 
A Sermon on the Incarnation of the Son of God, 1824. He also contributed 
a valuable article to the Eclectic Review (Jan. and Feb., 1816), on Gibbon’s 
Miscellaneous Works. He died July 9, 1830. 


122 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER, 


disqualified in quite as great, perhaps considerably greater degree, than 
by my lameness during that expedition so many years since. There are 
latterly many things, in addition to mere chronology, to remind me that 
life is approaching or entering its last stage, and that the grand concern 
is to prepare for its final hour. Such considerations will sometimes visit 
the mind of my dear and estimable friend also, though probably not ex¬ 
periencing many direct admonitions (in any way of infirmity) of the ad¬ 
vance toward old age. 


CLXIV. TO J. PURSER, ESQ. 

Stapleton, A^ovember, 1830. 

My dear Sir, — For many weeks I have been intending to write to 
you; and a few days since, took out from a quire this identical sheet for 
the purpose. The newspaper received from'you yesterday admonishes 
me not longer to defer. A prompt acknowledgment was due for your kind 
invitation to revisit Ireland. That is a pleasure which I have been long 
promising myself; and the new kind of navigation has vastly changed 
the calculation of time and facility in the transit. But the decline of the 
year so late as into the autumn, is not quite the desirable season. Short 
nights are the thing for the sea, and long days, late evenings especially, 
are the thing for a little adventure, in which one would wish to combine 
with the friendly household gratifications some slight trips to see again 
several of the beautiful spots and scenes of your “ green island.” At 
the same time, there would be no little pensiveness, perhaps more than 
the pleasure; indeed I am sure there would, in revisiting some of the 
places (suppose the Dayle) which I have seen in company with our ex¬ 
cellent departed friend, the associate no more in any adventures or plea¬ 
sures under the sun. Besides our various walks in the park to Ilowth, 
and other places in the vicinity of the city, I had in company with him 
and Strahan (also gone) an exceedingly interesting excursion into the 
noble scenery of the county of Wicklow. I have no doubt I should 
greatly admire these scenes, if I were there again ; but the effect of far 
towards forty years since added to my life, and the continually presented 
thought, “ he is here no more—nor on earth',” would throw a shade over 
the beauty and the magnificence. 

You may well believe I was greatly interested by your account of his 
declining health and final removal, and by your sentiments and reflexions 
on the affecting event. You will indeed feel it a loss irreparable. But 
how pleasing and consolatory it is to contemplate a good man’s end ;— 
“ the end of that man is peace.” And consider, in how inferior and 
limited a sense it is his end ; it being the end only of the brief introduc¬ 
tory period through which he had to advance and be disciplined for an 
incomparably nobler, and an endless life, on which he has now entered, 
and from which he triumphantly looks hack on death, as a dark passage 
through which he will pass no more. We, my friend, have yet to pass 




LETTERS. 


123 


it: may we do sq^ when the time shall come, with the same pious, Chris¬ 
tian peace and confidence, and may we rejoin him in the happy society 
of a better world ! But you, I hope, are appointed to a long protracted 
series of duties and usefulness in this lower sphere. 

.... I warmly congratulate you on the character and abilities of 
the elder individuals of your children. One of them, I perceive by the 
newspaper, has acquitted himself worthily at college. What are your 
prospects or his wishes as to his future pursuits and vocation in life ? 
Such duties and attainments are probably pointing to some professional 
department. I wish you could get a very large infusion of disciplined 
talent, sound reason, and virtuous principle among your islanders. You 
are certainly in a disastrous, and I am afraid, perilous condition—such 
fearful excitability, amidst so much ignorance, superstition, poverty, and 
oppression. You have sent us hither a famous present in your ’squire 
O’Connell, a man who has accomplished one immense good for Ireland, 
but whose wild-fire, if not absolutely unprincipled, character and pur¬ 
poses are now doing sad mischief. He is doing his best to throw dis¬ 
credit on all sorts of reforms, so urgently wanted, by the lawless man¬ 
ner in which he is ostensibly co-operating to promote them. Nay, jiot 
co-operating ,—for their more rational promoters are harassed and ob¬ 
structed by his assistance. How unfortunate that such a man should 
(instead of a Grattan*) stand forward by far the most prominent repre¬ 
sentative of Ireland, to be, in the apprehension of a largo portion of the 
people here, a true sample and interpreter of the collective Irish charac¬ 
ter. I have little hope of any material good for either nation, from the 
present parliament, or from the new monarch, about whom there is so 
mad a rant in fashion. What is such a man likely to know or care 
about the good of the nation, whose only notion of kingship, as far as 
yet appears, is that of enjoying himself at his ease (and putting other 
people at their ease with him) in a jolly, dashing, gadding sort of hilar¬ 
ity ? Think of such a character, and then of the stupid baseness that, 
even in parliament, is calling him “ the best king that ever ascended the 
British throne !” It would be quite enough to say that it is to be hoped 
he is better than the last, and there could not well be a cheaper p^raise. 

I am sure you cannot fail to contemplate with great and serious inter¬ 
est, the portentous aspect of the affairs of the nations. There is coming 
into action, on a vast scale, a principle of change and commotion, of 
hostility, hatred, and defiance to the old established “ order of things,” 
which absolutely can never be quieted nor quelled—which must be pro¬ 
gressive with augmenting knowledge (“ knowledge is power ”), but 
which in pervading and actuating a mass so dreadtully corrupt as man- 

* “ His eloquence, must, in its earliest stage of public display, have 
evinced itself as the flame and impetus of mighty genius. The man 
would infallibly be recognized as of the race of the intellectual Incas, the 
children of the Sun.” — Contributions, &c., to the Eclectic, vol. ii., p. 333. 
{Grattan’s Speeches. Eclectic Review, Feb., 1813.) 


124 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


kind is in every nation, must inevitably, while a righteous Governor pre¬ 
sides over the world, be accompanied in its progress by aAvful commo¬ 
tions and inflictions. My settled impression is, that the rising generation 
are destined to witness a process more tremendous than all that their 
predecessors have beheld. While exulting at what has taken place in 
France, I have yet no confidence of a peaceful result in Europe. 


CLXV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, December 31, 1830. 

My dear Sir, — .... I am as little as yourself capable of forming, 
and as little disposed to seek or wish, new friendships ; nor, yourself ex¬ 
cepted (a term approaching to twenty years is enough to confer the de¬ 
nomination'oZcZ, as applied to social relations), do I retain more than some 
relic of old friendships; I have never been propense to contract them. 
Two or three valuable companions of my early life still survive ; objects 
of my high esteem, but at remote distances, rarely corresponded with, one 
of them not seen more than once in a space of between thirty and forty 
years, all of them formed to habits and feelings greatly differing in 
many respects from my own. Here I am on amicable terms with 
a few excellent individuals, of different degrees of intellectual en¬ 
dowment. With the grand chief in that quality, indeed, my acquaint¬ 
ance has not become intimate. From the first I made a point of 
duty not to intrude on his time in the morning part of the day, which 
I considered it as his imperative duty (for the public’s sake, religion’s 
sake, posterity’s sake to employ alone) ; and in the evenings, with a com¬ 
paratively rare exception, he is, all the week and all the year round, out 
in company somewhere or other, where I have been compelled to decline 
many invitations to be of the parties, from experience of the great mis¬ 
chief of turning out of rooms, often heated to excess, into the night air. 
Next to him in mental power is Anderson, whom, I remember, you met 
once or twice. He is a very powerful man, of great and solid worth. 
Just now and then I have fallen in the way of Dr. Prichard, for whose 
qualities I have a high esteem, while I am amazed at his attainments, 
and his prodigious/acu% of attaining. I get into what is called com¬ 
pany in a very moderate degree, but quite as much as I wish ; and it is 
one recommendation of this dark abode, at several miles distance from 
the town, that it serves to limit my liability in that reapect. A hard 
evening’s talk, with that abler sort of men, especially if repeated several 
times at short intervals, does me sensible mischief, as affecting that ob¬ 
scure internal disorder which I have experienced during the last year or 
two. I am just now the worse in that respect, for several such even¬ 
ings, which have come too thick at this particular season of convivial 
meeting; the “ generous fare,” as we call it, contributing, I have no 
doubt, to the evil. The morbid symptom is, or was, previously to the 
last few weeks, something less prevailing, I think, than at the time I first 
mentioned it to you. 





LETTERS. 


125 


CLXVI. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

Stapleton, March 9, 1831. 

My dear Friemd,— .... I was much interested by your informa¬ 
tion respecting the branches, and movements, and location, of your 
family. In frequently walking, a vastly remote time since, by the Lif- 
fey, but not so far as Celbridge, I could little dream, that one day a part 
of the Brearley Hall, Foot, and Ewood family was to take an abode by 
that stream. How much more likely it then was that 1 should do so, 
who, however, was not to do so. There are few things more remarka¬ 
ble than the total uncalculableness, if I may make such a word, of the 
ultimate local destinations of a young family, or a knot of youthful 
friends. 

I know not whether to be sorry (I can be so only in reference to your- 
selt and Mrs. Fawcett personally) that one of your family, by this time 
a second, and, as you intimate, probably ere long a third, may be found 
occupied with their various duties in the neighborhood of Dublin, instead 
of that of Hebden-bridge. There sadly wants, in the former scene, as 

many good and useful people as you can spare.lam rather 

pleased with the project of the third member, for going to preach where 
there is so notorious a want of religious instruction of the genuine kind. 

The name Celbridge instantly recalled Dean Swift to my mind. But 
I am quite mistaken (very possibly so) if it was not Vanessa, instead of 
Stella, that was his companion there. The story of those two women, 
as told by Walter Scott, in his Life of Swift, is very interesting and very 
mournful; that of Vanessa (Miss Vanhomrigh) especially, so ardently 
affectionate, so wronged, so cruelly consigned to a premature fate. 

I congratulate you on such a pleasing novelty as an excursion to Ire¬ 
land, unfortunate only in its being made in winter. It would be curious, 
if practicable, to ascertain the difference of effect on the mind, between 
such an adventure, made at your time of life, and in youth as it hap¬ 
pened to me. Latterly, I have been almost intending to make on myself 
the experiment of this comparison, having been strongly invited to visit 
Dublin, by almost the only one of my early friends there whom time has 
left alive, and whom I have never seen since he was a youth, or rather a 
boy. His excellent father, in whose house I lived, is very lately dead. 
Him, after more than an interval of thirty years, I did see here the year 
before last. 

Do you feel, in your own person, strong intimations of advancing 
age ? My brother tells me of snov} on your head. I have lost nearly all 
my teeth, nearly the hearing on one side, much of my original strength 
of sight, and all the tenacity of a memory never more than very mode¬ 
rately good. Within the last year, too, I have become subject to great 
irregularity and disorder of circulation or pulsation, uncertain from what 
internal cause, too probably from something organically disordered in the 
vital central part. It is greatly affected, additionally disordered for the 
time, by any considerable effort of excited continued speaking; insomuch 



126 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


that any such thing as preaching, which, for years past, 1 have declined 
in all but very rare instances, must now be declined wholly. Amidst 
these monitory defalcations, I am still favored with a considerable measure 
of what may comparatively be called strength. My dear friend, we must 
think daily of holding ourselves in readiness for setting off on the last 
great journey. 


CLXVII. TO J. PURSER, ESQ. 

Stapleton, March 29, 1S31. 

.... I must congratulate you on a great amendment (in respect to 
the tumultuary disposition) in your green island since the date of your 

last.I do not wonder, that in beholding so lawless and alarming 

a state of your populace, you should have been driven, a little too far 
toward the passive obedience and non-resistance principle; which enjoins 
the people, in a fallacious and treacherous sense, to “ be quiet and mind 
their own business.” “ Leave the concerns of government to those whose 
business it is—the statesmen; our part is respect and submission;” was 
the precept and doctrine inculcated by the good people on me, when a 
young fellow, blazing with the fire kindled by the French revolution; 
and there has been a long and melancholy illustration of the wisdom and 
benefit of this succumbing and reverential loyalty, in the accumulation 
of every sart of corruption ; in wanton wars, to gratify the pride of courts ; 
in debts and taxes, which have almost crushed the people to the earth; 
in the consolidation of a system of iniquity, which, just at this very 
juncture, when it could be endured no longer, is demanding the whole 
energy of the national mind and will to be exerted for its abolition ; and 
w’hich is still maintaining a desperate and formidable conflict for the 
defeat of that whole energy. “ Why,” one exclaims, as one abomination 
after another is exposed, “ Why did our forefathers, in their besotted 
loyalty to power, let the thing come to this ? Curse on their loyalty, 
though they were silly enough to identify it with piety !” 

Too true it is, that some of the nations that have risen in their wrath 
to crush their oppressors, are showing themselves ill fit for freedom. 
But what then ? they never would have become so under an oppressive 
despotism ; the alternative therefore was, either to continue, age after 
age, in their old debasing slavery, or to throw it off, and get on as they 
might, through a protracted process of experiment, confusion, and com¬ 
motion, toward an ultimate state of well-ordered freedom, which, after 
all. will never be attained till there be more religion, more reverence 
for the supreme and eternal Sovereign. But here again, how is religion 
itself to be known, or even freely taught, till the barbarizing power of 
combined tyranny and superstition bo blown up ? 

A portentous gloom is gathering and thickening over Europe, giving 
sad presages that there are vials of wrath ready to be poured out, in 
a vindictive dispensation of the divine justice. But let us trust, that 
while it is vindictive, it will, at the same time, be corrective, and work 



LETTERS. 


127 


on, and work out, into a purer and happier condition of the world at 
length. 

The most grievous scene of our immediate contemplation is Poland, 
such magnificent heroism, such prodigious sacrifices, too probably 
doomed to end in failure and aggravated national calamity. How often 
one wishes that some 50,000 of the fiery spirits that are disturbing France, 
could be arrayed with the completest possible apparatus of destruction, 
by the side of that patriotic and self-devoted legion. You most certainly 
exult, with so many myriads of us, that we really are, at last, in the near 
prospect of getting rid of a huge mass of pestilential rottenness, declared 
by its defenders to be an essential part of what is called “the constitu¬ 
tion,”—and which may be so, for ought I know or care, for neither I nor 
anybody else can tell what that canted and extolled humbug does really 
consist of; all I know is, that the term has been one of the most availa¬ 
ble of all the expedients of political delusion. 


CLXVIIl. TO DR STENSON. 

1S31. 

Yes, my dear sir, we must be prepared to surrender to the inevitable 
approaches of mortality, and the more earnestly aspire to be ready to 
surrender the whole of wliat can die. How striking to realize the idea, 
that at a time, at the utmost comparatively not distant, this entire mate¬ 
rial frame, with all that in it is now in order and in disorder, will be 
under ground and dissolving into dust. I often image to myself the fact, 
as it will one day be, when, at the same time, all above ground will 
continue to be as we see it now, and are sharers of it, life and activity— 
a profusion of blooming youth, amusement, business, infinitely various 
interests and pursuits, and (as now) little thought of death. So far the 
anticipated, inevitable, and prodigious change, cannot but have a dreary 
aspect. But there is the never-dying 'principle, the spiritual agent, the 
real and imperishable teing; that will be set free, and rise in sublime 
independence of dust, and all that can be turned to dust; let us take 
care of that, or rather commit it to God to be taken care of, and then 
never mind the insignificant loss which we are doomed to incur, of a 
piece of organized clay. 


CLXIX. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, July IG, 1831. 

. ... I am thankful, but wish I were much more so, for such an 

instance as you mention, on the authority of Mrs. L-, of the valuable 

effect of which anything I have written may be made the instrumental 
mean. When informed of such circumstances, I seem to hear the solemn 
and warning words, “ Lest I be myself a cast-away.” I am strongly with 




128 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


you in adverting to the “ autumn ” of life, and the gradual loss of coe¬ 
vals and friends ; and their removal seems needful, in addition to the 
figured chronicle of time, to make one really see and feel, that the main 
allotment of life is gone by. The fact and feeling that it is so, often 
return on me when exulting in the great change so immensely advan¬ 
tageous, as we may surely hope, in the political world. It occurs to me 
how soon I shall be withdrawn, absolutely and finally, from the scene, 
and all its events and interests. Still it is for the nation’s sake, for man¬ 
kind’s sake, for posterity’s sake, an emphatic gratification, to see a long 
and proudly imperious reign of corruption and iniquity dra,wing to a 
close. It is a just, and quite rational emotion, that triumphs at the 
ignominious and irrecoverable prostration of an order of men who have, 
during so long a domination, been inflicting immeasurable mischief on 
the nation and the world. How long it has been to wait for a revolution, 
which, forty years since, many of us fancied to bo near at hand ; and 
what an enormity of evil perpetrated during that wide space, in the 
shapes of war, exhausting profligacy, and all diversities of delusion, 
oppression, and practised and patronized corruption ! And how unex¬ 
pectedly, how suddenly, has this downfall happened to the arrogant and 
besotted tribe ! Some twenty months since, or less, what inefliible scorn 
they would have felt for any prophet of such an event. There will not 
fail to be evils in the new system, but an immense good is gained in the 
nation’s being no longer at the disposal of a class of men, who would 
v/illingly sell it to the Devil, if they could be sure of getting payment. 


ILLNESS OF MRS. FOSTER. 


129 


CHAPTER VIII. 

ILLNESS AND DEATH OF MRS. FOSTER.-MR. ANDERSON.-^JOURNEY 

TO WALES.-MR. HUGHES.-RAMMOHUNROY.-LETTERS ON THE 

CHURCH.-ON THE BALLOT.-ECLECTIC REVIEW.-MR. FAWCETT. 

1832—1838. 

The ensuing six years formed the saddest period in Foster’s 
life. It began with the fatal illness of her who had been his be¬ 
loved, affectionate, and invaluable companion for nearly a quarter 
of a century, and whom he regarded as the cause not only of a 
very great portion of whatever happiness he had possessed during 
that long period, but of whatever mental improvement he had 
made. Her intellect was in an extraordinary degree strong and 
correct, and for a refined perception and depth of reflective 
feeling, her husband declared that he had never known her 
equal. 

For several years Mrs. Foster’s health had been in a very 
precarious state, but in the spring of 1832, the symptoms of de¬ 
cline assumed a more decidedly alarming aspect. “ The occasion 
of my walks to Downend,”* says Mr. Foster, “ is a painful one. 
My estimable wife is there (at her sister Cox’s) in a state of great 
prostration. Some morbid affection by which she has been suf¬ 
fering many years, interfering with the process of nutrition, and 
slowly growing worse, without being plainly evident in its nature 
till within the last year or two, has reduced her within the last 
few months to a miserably debilitated and emaciated condition, 
and so rapidly at last as to demand a strong medical treatment; a 
treatment which at the same time her feebleness can very ill 
sustain. She is assiduously attended by our worthy friend and 
neighbor. Dr. Bompass; and her brother-in-law. Dr. Stenson, of 
Bourton, has just now kindly come to be with her a week or two. 
It is confessedly a case of great doubtfulness and danger, and 
with no hope of anything like a complete remedy ; but not with¬ 
out a hope of such alleviation as may protract for a while her 

* To the Rev. Josiah Hill, May 1, 1832. 

10 


VOL. II. 


130 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER, 


valuable life ;—I regret to think of its precariousness even at the 
best. I will hope that the divine mercy may spare her to us for 
a while, but fear to look forward. If she do not speedily recover 
a little strength she must sink, I fear, inevitably. If a few weeks 
shall, by the indulgence of Heaven, restore her sufficiently for 
the journey, she wdll go to Dr. Stenson’s at Bourton, her native 
place, were she will be daily under the most kind and judicious 

medical care.I am confident of her safety as to the great 

linal interest; but her removal would be a most mournful dis¬ 
pensation to me, to her children, and to those of her friends who 

best know her exceeding value.When my apprehensions 

are gloomy, I sometimes comfort myself by the consideration, 
that at the age of nearly sixty-two, I can have no very long time 
to stay behind. Oh may we all, through the merits of our Re¬ 
deemer, find ourselves one day where your dear and inestimable 
wife and son are now enjoying their triumph over mortality, sin, 
and all evil.” 

In June, Mrs. Foster performed, though not without difficulty, 
the journey to Bourton. At times the disorder appeared to be 
checked; yet the amendment was never so great as to warrant 
the expectation of recovery : still, no immediate danger was 
threatened. In the course of few weeks, however, the intelli¬ 
gence of a marked increase of debility brought her husband in 
haste to the scene of affliction. In a letter to Mr. Anderson 
(dated Bourton, July 21), he says, “ I had been intending, but not 
immediately, nor at any exactly determined time, to come hither. 
The communications from S. were not such as to preclude a 
small delay, which several points of convenience made of some 
consequence to me. A letter from him received on Wednesday 
described my wife as having been, during several days, to the 
end of the preceding week, remarkably better in all appearance, 
but as having suffered a diminution of that apparent improve¬ 
ment ; and as there would be an exactly opportune conveyance 
from Cheltenham hither to-day (Friday), he said that he and his 
patient wished me to avail myself of it, which I instantly de¬ 
termined to do. His letter had come at noon on Wednesday, and 
when we were just going to bed within a few minutes of midnight, 
we were surprised and alarmed by Mrs. C. in her carriage, sum¬ 
moning us to be ready to go with her, at that hour, for Bourton ; 
a messenger on horseback having brought a note from S. to her, 
and one to me, to tell us it was very desirable we should all go 




ILLNESS OF MRS. FOSTER, 


131 


without delay,—though not meaning or expecting we should set 
off till early in the morning (this was not noted in the letter). We 
reached here by eight o’clock, and found our dearest human 
friend something relieved from the state she was in when the 
messenger was sent off; but I was shocked to see her so utterly 
worn away—reduced to mere shadow. Her having but four or 
five days before (as informed by letter) been able to bear being 
drawn out in a Bath chair for a mile or two, sometimes twice in 
a day, and able to walk about the house, as she informed me in a 
letter, with the aid of a stick, had left me unprepared to see her 
so totally prostrated. She had suffered in the night of Tuesday, 
a sudden and formidable recurrence of the worst symptoms. I 
have never, since the beginning of her illness, been sanguine of 
her recovery to even the most moderate degree of anything like 
health. Dr. S. plainly told me when at Overn (I requested him 
to be explicit), that the omens were decidedly stronger on the side 
of fear than of hope ; but he did allow the hope that she might 
partially and for a while recover. 

“ There is no question left now ; she is entirely confined to the 
bed from which I have not the faintest hope she will ever rise 
again. The internal disorganization has proved itself extreme, 
and beyond all probability, if not possibility, of repair. She is 
so feeble as not to be able to converse but for a little while at a 
time, even though (which is wonderful ^d merciful) she suffers 
hardly anything that can be called 'pain. And evidently she is 
calmly resigning, quietly withdrawing from, everything of this 
world, excepting her affection for us who are to survive her. In 
respect to health, her life has been, for many years past, an af¬ 
flictive one; borne with the greatest fortitude and patience, but 
required a great and constant exertion of tliose virtues. Partly 
owing to this invincible ill-health, and partly to a pensive tendency 
of mind, her piety has been often tinged with the more gloomy 
order of feelings and reflections. From all this, I believe, she is 
near a final escape. She may linger for weeks; S. says there is 
no certainty, as to time, in the prognostics. The malady can be 
somewhat tempered by medical care ; but any considerable sud¬ 
den aggravation of it might be speedily fatal, and against this 
there is no security on the ground of present signs. I shall of 
course remain here to await events—how unwilling I am to say, 
‘ the event P ” 

Soon after Mr. Foster’s arrival at Bourton, the symptoms of 


132 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


immediate danger were so much diminished, that Mrs. Foster 
expressed a hope that she should be able to return shortly to Sta¬ 
pleton. Under these circumstances, Mr. Foster ventured to leave 
Bourton, and after spending a day or two at Cheltenham, reached 
home Sept. 7th. In a letter to Mr. Easthope (Sept. 9), he says, 
“ I remember your kind request at parting to be informed of any 
intelligence I might receive of my dear and estimable wife; the 
pensive thought of whom often came on me amidst our walks and 
lively dialogues, and comes on me now, that I am in solitude 
with habitual impression. I have a letter to-day from Dr. Sten- 
son, describing her situation as not materially different since the 
day we left Bourton ; only he thinks she becomes perceptibly 
weaker. He thinks she may linger a considerable time, but that 
a more speedy result, not a quite sudden one, would be no cause 
for surprise.” .... In a postscript, he added, “ I shall return to 
Bourton in two or three weeks at most ; possibly in a shorter 
time.” The possibility here apprehended, was, indeed, very soon 
to be verified. On the following day he wrote to Mr. Hill: 
“ Left quite alone for some hours in the house, I have been walk¬ 
ing about the ditferent rooms, and looking at the various objects, 
the fire-places, the books, the furniture, the prints suspended round 
the walls, with the pensive and mournful consideration,—‘ She 
will see these apartments, will be seen in them, no more.’ There 
is a strange sinking of the heart at the thought. 

“ I do not at all remember what was the description I gave 
when I wrote to you from Bourton ; it must, I think, have been 
about that time that she appeared somewhat better ; that she was 

much better, as to the original and inveterate malady. 

When that malady appeared to be in a great measure subdued, 
by the use of strong medical means, we were beginning to pro¬ 
mise ourselves that she would recover strength ; and, in fact, she 
did so, in some degree, for a little while ; but it appears as if 
the constitution had been too completely sapped to leave strength 

enough for reaction.She happily does not suffer, nor has, 

during all the illness, suffered, much pain, an exemption for 

which I am thankful.If the next information be that there 

is a marked progress of decline, I shall immediately return to 
await and attend the last event. I have written to her twice 
within the three days that I have been here. As our watchmen 
have now just begun their nightly rounds for the darker half of 
the year, I shall cease to be in much apprehension for the safety 



DEATH OF MRS. FOSTER. 


133 


of the house, a consideration which presses very seriously in the 
neighborhood of this city, which the stupid, wretched magistracy 
leave almost wholly Unprotected. There has been a man to come 
each night to sleep in the house while I have been away ; but 
that is a very imperfect security, and I feel it a cause for thank¬ 
fulness, and for some degree of wonder, that the house has not 
been broken into. An outhouse loas broken open. 

“ My dear wife is enabled to maintain a calm resignation to 
the heavenly Father’s will ; and the impending event, so mourn¬ 
ful for us, will be to her the entrance on endless felicity. She 
has long been under the discipline of the good Spirit; often say¬ 
ing, she felt it indispensable that that discipline should be a hard 
])rocess, to subdue the evils of the mind. She has, with invinci¬ 
ble patience, borne ill health, and even been thankful for it some¬ 
times, for its salutary operation. She has also felt, even from 
childhood, a tendency to gloomy reflections on the perversities of 
the heart, the awful mysteries of the divine government of the 
world, and our unknown future destinies. All this has less beset 
her during this long afilietion than ever before ; and, from all 
this she will exultingly escape and emerge at—why do I say 1 
fear .?—no distant time, in all present probability. But oh, I 
should have been glad to detain her here ! But she says, and I 
would say, ‘ Thy will be done.’ ”* But on the very day that 
these lines were written the mortal conflict terminated. Tlie 
narrative will be best given in Foster’s own words: “I was not 
allowed,” he says,*)* ‘‘ to stay long at Stapleton : a letter received 
from Dr. Stenson on Sunday (Sept. 9), signifying an increase of 
the fatal indications, had determined me to return hither very 

shortly, to wait the inevitable event.His second letter 

reached me on Tuesday, with the very unexpected information, 
that the fatal event was already past. As I had left her in pos¬ 
session of such a remainder of her slowly diminishing strength, 
as to be able to sit up the greater part of each day, I had no im¬ 
pression that she could be so very near the fatal hour, though 
perfectly convinced it was not very far off: I expected a number 
of weeks to intervene. She survived the time I left her but four 
days.” . . . . “ On two or three of those very days she rose 
from her bed, and passed a considerable time in another room : 
they informed me she retained the full possession of lier facul- 

* To Mr. Hill, Stapleton, Sept. 10, 1832 

f To J. Easthope, Esq., M.P., Bourton, Sept. 13, 1832. 



134 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ties to the very last; she partly raised herself in the bed to re¬ 
ceive some medical preparation, then lay deliberately down, and 
in less than ten minutes expired, without the slightest struggle, or 
apparent suffering of any kind. The event was so sudden that 
her children, in another part of the house, could not be called 
into the room before it was passed.”* . . . . “ I have come 
hither (last night) so considerable a time since the event, that I 
am dissuaded from seeing, as I wished to do, the deserted mortal 
relic, which will be removed early the day after to-morrow, and 
with the very least possible ceremony. If conventional usages 
did not come obstinately in the way, my infinite preference would 
be, that the last office should be performed at the midnight hour, 
in perfect silence, and with no attendance besides the parties im¬ 
mediately interested. What have a number of gazing, indifferent 
spectators to do with my loss, or my demeanor or feeling regard¬ 
ing it ?” 

In a letter of the same date to another friend, Foster says,"]* “ I 
am grateful to heaven, that from the beginning of her illness 
quite to the end, she suffered nothing that could be called posi¬ 
tive pain. This happily contributed to her maintaining an unal¬ 
terable patience and tranquillity throughout her whole illness; 
there was never, I am assured, one expression of impatience, mur¬ 
muring, or fretfulness. She has indeed been always remarkable 
for a firm and quiet fortitude ; and she has had much to require 
it, through many years of ill health, gradually descending at last, 
since the beginning of this year, to positive illness. When a 
person’s ill health is habitual, one month or year much like 
another, and complaints seldom and very briefly uttered, it is the 
fault of associates, who are themselves in exempt condition, not 
to show or feel the due attention or sympathy. And it now 
comes upon me, with some degree of regret and self-reproach, 
that I too seldom testified the due sympathetic interest on this 
subject. It was an interest which she most rarely claimed, and 
therefore should have been the more spontaneously given. It is 
striking to observe how a thing not felt or thought of tow'ard a 
friend alive rises up into a palpable reproach, when that friend 
has gone beyond the reach of receiving friendly attentions any 
more. Not that I am deeply accusing myself in this respect: I 
loved and valued her deeply, cordially, and continually, and de¬ 
lighted to reciprocate her devoted affection; but it is strange to 

• To Mrs. Saunders, Sept. 29, 1832. f To B. Stokes, Esq. 


DEATH OF MRS. FOSTER. 


135 


observe how anything that was less than the most watchful atten¬ 
tion to what she suffered from constantly defective health can now 
come back to memory as a cause of regret. 

“ It excites a pensive emotion to take back, just now, some 
small things which I left in her keeping when I set off for Chel¬ 
tenham ; and still more so, to receive back unopened two letters 
which I wrote to her, of a consolatory nature, within the first 
three days that I was at Stapleton, both of which arrived here 
after she had departed, but, therefore, ceased to need human 
sympathy and consolation. I am not sure that I shall ever open 
them. 

. “ . . . .It has been an extremely advantageous circumstance 
for my wife, and for tliose who have had tlie principal care of 
attendance on her, that the period of her illness was appointed to 
fall on exactly the finest, brightest and warmest part of the year, 
from May to September, during which, besides the nights being 
so short, she had, and greatly enjoyed, the exhilaration of being 
drawn out, about the garden and the vicinity, in a Bath chair, 
admiring the flowers, and refreshed by the fine air and sunshine, 
which I really believe she had not enjoyed so much during .seve¬ 
ral whole years before. Here too she had the utmost advantage 
of medical skill and care every day and hour, and of all manner 
of affectionate attendance and accommodation. On account of 
the girls especially, it is a very favorable circumstance, that her 
decease took place here, instead of at home, thus averting one 
melancholy association, which would have fixed itself insepara¬ 
bly and permanently on the place.” 

It is very gratifying to record a spontaneous and truly delicate 
tribute of respect paid at this season of sorrow by persons most of 
whom had little acquaintance with the bereaved family beyond 
what arose from having lived in the same vicinity ;—a beautiful 
contrast to the vulgar curiosity usually excited by such events, 
and to what the heart of the mourner equally shrinks from, a 
busy, ostentatious, garrulous condolence. “ The last offices were 
rendered,” says Mr. Foster,* “ on Saturday. I think I expressed 
in my last my extreme repugnance to a large assemblage of indif¬ 
ferent spectators. This feeling by some means became known in 
the village; and I have to mention it as a very singular mark of 
delicacy and respect, that the inhabitants all, with hardly an ex- 

*To J. Easthope, Esq., Bourton, Sept. 17, 1832. 


186 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ception, stayed away ; so that, excepting the persons whose servi¬ 
ces were necessary, none but a very few from some distance, 
unapprised of the preventive consideration, were at the spot. I 
shall charge Mrs. Stenson to find means to make it known that 
the people have my acknowledgments for this unexpected kind¬ 
ness.’’ 

On Foster’s return to Stapleton, he wrote immediately to Mr. 
Hill, with whom his friendship had acquired a deeper and melan¬ 
choly interest, from the striking coincidences in their domestic 
trials. “ I have returned hither” he says, “ but have an utter 
repugnance to say, returned home j that name is applicable no 
longer. You may be sure I am grateful for your kind sympathy 
and suggestions of consolation ; not the less so for its being too true, 
that there is a weight on the heart which the most friendly human 
hand cannot remove. The melancholy fact is, that my beloved, 
inestimable companion has left me. It comes upon me—in evi¬ 
dence, how varied and sad ! and yet, for a moment, sometimes I 
feel as if I could not realize it as true. There is something that 
seems to say. Can it be that I shall see her no more—that 1 shall 
still, one day after another, find she is not here, that her affec¬ 
tionate voice and look will never accost me ; the kind grasp of 
her hand never more be felt; that when I would be glad to con¬ 
sult her, make an observation to her, address to her some expres¬ 
sion of love, call her “ my dear wife,” as I have done so many 
thousand times, it will be in vain, she is not here ? Several times, 
a considerable number—even since I followed her to the tomb, a 
momentary suggestion of thought has been, as one and another 
circumstance has occurred, “ I will tell Maria of this.” Even 
this very day, when I parted with Dr. Stenson, who out of pure 
kindness accompanied me a long stage on the road, there was 
actually for a transient instant a lapse of mind into the idea of 
telling her how very kind he had been. I have not suffered, nor 
expect to feel any overwhelming emotions, any violent excesses of 
grief; what I expect to feel is, a long repetition of pensive moni¬ 
tions of my irreparable loss ; that the painful truth will speak 
itself to me again, and still again, in long succession, often in soli¬ 
tary reflection (in which I feel the most), and often as objects 
come in my sight, or circumstances arise, which have some asso¬ 
ciation with her who is gone. The things which belonged to her 
with a personal appropriation; things which she used or particu- 


DEATH OF MRS. FOSTER. 


137 


larly valued ; things which she had given me,or I had given her; 
her letters or my own to her; the corner of the chamber where I 
know she used to pray ; her absence—unalterable absence—at 
the hour of family worship, of social reading, of the domestic ta¬ 
ble ; her no more being in lier place to receive me on my return 
home from occasional absence ; the thought of what she would 
have said, or how she would have acted, on subjects or occasions 
that come in question ; the remembrance how she did speak or act 
in similar instances ;—all such things as these will renew the 
pensive emotions, and tell me still again what I have lost,—what 
that was, and how great its value, which the sovereign Disposer 
has in his unerring wisdom taken away. Yes, it is He that has 
taken away what it was He that gave me, and what was so dear 
and valuable to me ; and I would not, I think I do pot, rebel 
against his dispensation ; I would not even repine or complain 
beyond that degree which he will regard with a merciful compas¬ 
sion. I should, and would be, thankful for having been indulged 
with tlie possession so long. Certainly, neither of us would, if 
such an exception might be made to an eternal law, recall our 
dear departed companions from their possession of that,triumph 
over sin, and sorrow, and death, to which they have been exalted. 
However great our deprivation, how transcendently greater is 
their advancement in the condition of existence ! And we should 
be unworthy to be loved by them still, as I trust that even at this 
very hour we are, if we could for a moment entertain such a 
wish. 

. . . “ I do hope, that through the mercy of the Father of 
spirits, even this loss shall be turned to gain to myself and the 
children, the care of whom now devolves on me in a much greater 
degree than heretofore. I hope that the solemn and affectionate 
thought of her who is gone from us, will, for each of us, give a 
powerful reinforcement to every admonition and persuasion of re¬ 
ligion ; that the aspiration,—May we meet her again, where friends 
will part no more,’ will often be an affecting motive to follow in 
the path by which she has gone to immortal happiness. What an 
inestimable advantage it is for the effect of instruction to her 
daughters ; that she can, with perfect confidence, be cited to them ; 
and recalled by their own thoughts, as a nearly faultless pattern, 
in both judgment and conduct. Her intellect was strong and dis¬ 
ciplined, her course of action was invariably conscientious in the 
highest degree; her piety was deep and reflective, bearing, how- 


138 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ever, very much from this reflectiveness itself, a somewhat more 
melancholy tinge than I would desire for her daughters. In 
thinking of them, 1 will not dwell on the consideration,—how dif¬ 
ferent to their juvenile feelings, after a while, will be this loss, 
from what it must continue to be to mine. May God enable us^ 
my dear friend, with ever increasing force of faith, to commit 
ourselves and our children to his mercy and his power.” 

In the summer of 1833 Mr. Foster made a second excursion into 
North Wales. Previously, however, he suffered another painful 
loss in the removal of Mr. Anderson, with whom (though their 
acquaintance was of comparatively recent date) he was on terms, 
as has been already noticed, of most cordial intimacy, and whose 
abilities and character he held in very high esteem. “ I expect to 
set off for Worcester,” he says,* “ on the expedition to North 
Wales to-morrow evening, and shall be absent, I am afraid, not 
less than about four weeks. I have little spirit or inclination for 
such an adventure; but ever since the former one (just twenty- 
one years back !) there has been an understanding between friend 
Stokes and me, that some time or other, if life continued, we were 
to do the same thing once more ; and lately he wrote to me, that 
there occurred, just now, a more favorable opportunity, with 
respect to the mode of conveyance, than he could expect; and 
that, as we were growing old, the thing must be “ soon or never.” 
I consented ; not without a wish, that it could rather have been 
left to the uncertainties of another year. 

I may well say ‘ uncertainties,’—for how little, at this time 
last year, did I anticipate, that in less than twelve short months 
more, that most valuable friend, Anderson, would be in his grave ! 
His health was habitually not good ; but such common things as 
head-aches, and disorders of the stomach, are not held to be omens 
of a man’s not living to complete his forty-ninth year. Till very 
near the end there was not, that 1 know of, any suspicion of disorder 
decidedly organic ; but the post mortem examination disclosed an 
inveterate disease of the omentum, and a morbid state of the liver, of 
which latter, indeed, there was some previous evidence within the 
last few weeks. Though a severe attack of the influenza was deemed 
10 have accelerated the mortal process. Dr. Prichard pronounced, 
after the examination, that the inveterate disease would, in no 
long time, have been mortal. He (Anderson) was over here only 
ten days before his death; refused the ofler of a friend, who 

* To the llev, Josiah Hill, June 27, 1833. 


DEATH OF MR. ANDERSON. 


139 


brought him in a fly, to procure another for his return, but suf¬ 
fered much in walking home ; and, from that time (though for 
several days he had the students to attend him at his own house), 
he rapidly sunk, with little pain, however, into a state of utter de¬ 
bility and prostration. When 1 saw him the day before his death, 
he could not speak much above a whisper. Dr. P., who came 
while I was with him, said there were some indications more 
favorable than on the preceding day, but whether he retained any 
hope of the patient’s continued amendment I do not know ; Ander- 
' son himself did not show any consciousness that he was past re¬ 
covery to the last, I was told. His mind v/as uniformly tranquil, 
and tiie attendants said lie retained his faculties till within two 
hours of the end, during which he was so gradually and quietly 
sinking, that it was hardly perceptible when he actually expired. 
Dr. P. attended him most assiduously, with all the kind anxiety 
of an affectionate friend. 

“ Every friend sympathizes with the family ; but the great 
irreparable loss is to the Academy, which his able and indefatiga¬ 
ble exertions had contributed to render, beyond all comparison, 
more efficient to its object than it has ever been before at any 
time since its institution. I have no doubt, that during the time 
of his tutorship, the young men have made more real improve¬ 
ment (the measure and manner of acquirement being taken into 
account) in one year, than they usually did before mfour, or cer¬ 
tainly in three. He assisted and excited their minds in other 
ways, in every way, as well as in the bare specific business of 
learning; and never spared himself any labor by which he could 
hope to benefit them. He had a strong and sagacious intellect, 
and the extent of his acquirements was quite wonderful, especially 
considering that he had had but very slender advantages in his 
early life. He possessed a genuine, habitual, and rational piety ; 
and was very benevolent, in spite of a certain acerbity and some¬ 
times roughness of manner, which made some people afraid of 
' him, and others not to like him. The sense of his worth, how¬ 
ever, had progressively gained ground, though but few compara¬ 
tively, even to the last, were fully apprised of it.”* 

* The Rev. William Anderson was born October 18, 1784, at Durno, in 
the parish of Garioch, Aberdeenshire; his parents were pious members of 
the church of Scotland. For several years he was first a scholar, and then 
a teacher in a sabbath evening-school at Aberdee*n. When scarcely seven¬ 
teen he became a member of the Independent Church meeting in George 
Street. Two years later he adopted antipsedobaptist views, and was bap- 


140 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


In a letter to Mr. Stokes, who had requested Foster to commit 
to writing his recollections of’their journey in the principality, he 
says, “ As to any sketciies of our long and delightful tour I have 
entirely failed. I found it in vain to call on my memory to fill 
up, in even the most meagre manner, what was very little more 
than a mere marking of the names of the successive places that 
distinguished our stages. That most excellent tactic of our cap¬ 
tain to have us off always in the early morning, gave no time 
for memoranda in the beginning of the day, and at the end of it 
one was fit for nothing but to go to sleep. It was truly a fine and 
luxurious excursion. In a favorable hour for recalling the dis¬ 
tant and the past, one can bring to the ‘ mind’s eye ’ many spec¬ 
tacles and forms of sublimity and beauty, among the latter never 
forgetting the millions of fox-gloves, honey-suckles, and wild- 

roses. These have bloomed on my imagination ever since. 

Taken altogether, the tour was a vastly gratifying adventure ; 
portions and scenes of it, sometimes one and sometimes another, 
return on my imagination with a very pleasing interest. It com¬ 
bined many circumstances and advantages which can very rarely 
come so fortunately together. I do not know that it was the less 
interesting to me for the thought which was often suggested in 
the striking or beautiful situations, ‘ I shall see this no more.’ 
There was another pensive sentiment in regard to my return 
home ; it was no longer home in the same sense as it had been 
on the return from absences and excursions in former years. If 
I was to see no more the interesting objects beheld in the journey, 
I was also to see no more the person who was always before 
ready to receive me with an affectionate welcome. She was gone 
to behold scenes, how amazingly different from all that we were 
contemplating ! But we also, my dear friend, are going fast on 
our way in the same journey, toward the same mysterious re- 


tized in the river Don by the Rev. T. Edmonds, since of Cambridge, who 
was then a student at the University. In February, 1S04, he removed to 
London, and in the following year entered the Bristol Baptist College, 
where he continued till the close of ISOS. After leaving Bristol, lie 
preached for some time at Devonport, then at Kislingbury, near Northamp¬ 
ton ; and in 1809 settled at Dunstable, where he remained sixteen years, 
till his removal to Bristol in 1S25. While at Dunstable, in addition to his 
pastoral duties, he contributed several articles to the Eclectic Review, 
wrote a “ History of the Russian Empire,” and republished, with notes and 
a second part, an extract from Jeremy Taylor’s “ Liberty of Prophesying,” 
under the title of “ The Baptists Justified.” For a very able and interest¬ 
ing sketch of Mr. Anderson’s life and character, th'e reader is referred to a 
memoir inserted in the Baptist Magazine, Oct. and Nov., 1833. 



DEATH OF MR. HUGHES. 


141 


gions. What a different kind and degree of emotion, surprise, 
amazement, awaits us there, from all that we have ever felt in 
the view of these terrestrial scenes !” 

Information reached Mr. Foster on his return from Wales of 
another approaching bereavement, which must have affected him 
more deeply than any save that one, a sense of which never left 
him even in his most cheerful and social moments. “ Our old 
and most excellent friend Flughes,” he says to Mr. Coles,* “ is 
still lingering on the very verge—and with what a happy pros¬ 
pect beyond ! To-day I received from him a message conveyed 
in a note from his son to Mr. Cottle, expressing a wish to hear 
from me once more, a last expression of the friendship of forty 
years. 1 shall write this final adieu as to this world with very 
pensive feelings, but with congratulation on both his retrospect 
and his prospect. He has been eminently faithful in the great 
Master’s service. How striking to consider what our valued 
friends, one after another, are gone to see and are going to see ! 
And oh ! what is that scene, that manner, that felicity of exist¬ 
ence, which some of them now possess, and this one friend more 
is, at the utmost, but a few short weeks at a distance from ? . . . 
It is a strikingly sensible, specific, and attractive point of relation 
to the other world, that we acquire by the fact that some of those 
are there whom we have valued and loved so recently here. 

“ At your age (though a number of years beyond that of Mr. 
Anderson) it is to be hoped that a very considerable tract of time 
remains for useful service. At mine any probable calculation 
becomes reduced to a very narrow space. But for having looked 
to see the day of the month in order to date this letter, the day 
would have passed off without my being aware that it is the day 
that completes my sixty-third year, what is denominated the grand 
climacteric. I deeply deplore not having lived to worthier pur¬ 
pose, both for myself and others; and earnestly hope and pray 
that whatever of life remains may be employed much more faith¬ 
fully to the great end of existence. But with this self-condemn¬ 
ing review, and with nothing but an uncertain and possibly small 
remainder of life in prospect, how emphatically oppressive would 
be the conscious situation, if there were not that great propitia¬ 
tion, that redeeming sacrifice, to rest upon for pardon and final 
safety.” 

The deeply pensive impression made on Foster’s mind by his 
* Sept. 17, 1S33. Mr. Hughes died Oct. 3. 


142 


LIFE OF JOHi\ FOSTER. 


great domestic bereavement, and the removal of Hall and Ander¬ 
son, so soon to be followed by that of Hughes, was prolonged by 
another similar event, one not involving, it is true, a dissolution 
of intimate friendship or even of long acquaintance, but yet fitted, 
from the juncture at which it happened, and the interesting cha¬ 
racter and position of the individual, to excite no ordinary emo¬ 
tion. “ The most remarkable thing of late,” Foster says, in a 
letter to Mr. Hill (Oct. 8, 1833), “ is the visit, so soon to end in 
the death, in the house behind our garden, of the Rajah Rammo- 
hunroy (the title of Rajah, of no very defined import, was con¬ 
ferred on him by the king of Delhi, the remaining shadow of the 
great Mogul). 1 had entertained a strong prepossession against 
him, had no wish to see him, but could not avoid it, when he M as 
come to the house of our young landlady, Miss Castle. 

“ My prejudice could not hold out half an hour after being in 
his company.. He was a very pleasing and interesting man ; in¬ 
telligent, and largely informed, I need not say—but unaffected, 
friendly, and, in the best sense of the word, polite. I passed two 
evenings in his company, only, however, as an unit in large par¬ 
ties ; the latter time, however, in particular and direct conversa¬ 
tion M'ith him, concerning some of the doctrines of the Indian 
philosophers, the political, civil, and moral state of the Hindoos. 
In the former instance, when the after-dinner company consisted 
of Dr. Carpenter, and sundry other doctors and gentlemen, 
churchmen and dissenters, he was led a little into his own reli¬ 
gious history and present opinions. He avowed his general be¬ 
lief in Christianity as attested by miracles (of M'hich I had 
understood tliat he made very light some ten or a dozen years 
since), but said that the internal evidence had had by much the 
greatest force on his mind. In so very heterogeneous a company, 
there was no going into any very specific particulars. Carpen¬ 
ter, in M'hose company I have since dined at Dr. Prichard's, very 
confidently claims him as one of the “ modern Unitarian ” school. 
.... It may be that he was finally near about in agreement 
with that school, but I do not believe that they have any exact 

knowledge of his opinions.Here he M^ent to several 

churches, and to hear Jay on a week-day at Bridge Street, as 
well as sometimes to Lewin’s Mead, where the family in which 
he was visiting constantly attend. There is, or a few days since 
there was, a great perplexity ^ how to dispose of his remains.* 

* “ The knowledge that the Rajah had, in various ways, manifested soli- 



RAJAH RAMMOHUNROY. 


143 


He had signified his wish not to be committed to any ecclesiasti¬ 
cal burying-grouncl, but, if it might be so managed, deposited in 
some quiet corner of the profane earth. His principal London 
friend (a Mr. Hare from India) thinks it the most desirable that 
he were conveyed to India. During the greater part of his short 
illness (it was an affection of the brain), he was in a state of 
such torpor as to be incapable of any communication. Dr. 
Prichard, who attended him during the latter days, says, he did 
not utter, while he was with him, ten distinct sentences. As far 
as I have heard there was nothing said to indicate the state of his 
mind. There were actions (of his hands, &:c.) which his own 
attendants said were the usual ones which accompanied his de¬ 
votional exercises. To me, and several of our order of friends, 
who were, the latter evening to which I have referred (at Mrs. 
Cox’s) in such close and interesting conversation with him, then 
apparently in perfect health, but then within hardly two days of 
the commencement of his fatal illness, it was emphatically strik¬ 
ing, nine or ten days after, to think of him as no longer in our 
world. This event, together with the almost sudden removal of 
Anderson (and if my old friend from youth, Hughes, be not 
already gone, he is on the very last brink of life), seem to press 
on me, with a tangible j^fesence, as it were, of the other world. 
And then where is she that was with me so lately ? so lately—for 
it is amazing how rapidly thirteen months have passed away— 
where is she ? and where is, my dear friend, your beloved com¬ 
panion that was —but that will be again 7 May Heaven prepare 
us to meet them ere-while, with ecstatic joy—^joy to them^ as well 
as to us ; for with rapturous emotion, they will welcome, when 
they arrive, those whom they have left behind !”.... 

citude to preserve his caste with a view both to his usefulness and to the 
security of his property, and the belief that it might be endangered if he 
were buried amon,^ other dead, or with Christian rites, operated to prevent 
the interment of his remains in any of the usual cemeteries Besides this, 
the rajah had repeatedly expressed the wish, that in case of his dying in 
England, a small piece of freehold ground might be purchased for his bury- 
ing'^place, and a cottage be built on it for the gratuitous residence of some 
respectable poor person’to take charge of it Every difficulty, however, was 
removed by the offer of Miss Castle. ... to appropriate to the object a beau¬ 
tifully adapted spot, in a shrubbery near her lawn under some fine elms. 
There this revered and beloved person was interred on the 18th of October, 
about two p.M. The coffin was borne on men’s shoulders, without a pall, 
and deposited in the grave, without any ritual, and in silence, .... 
Those who followed him to the grave, and sorrowed there, were his son 
and two native servants, the members of the families of Stapleton-grove and 
Bedford-square, the guardians of Miss Castle, and two of her nearest rela¬ 
tives, Mr. Estlin, Mr. Foster and Dr. Jerrard, together with several 
ladies,” &c.— Br. Carpenter's Discourse, Appendix, p. 122. 





144 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


The Serampore controversy, in addition to his domestic con¬ 
cerns, so fully absorbed. Foster’s attention, that for nearly nine 
years he prepared nothing for the press, with the exception of the 
“ Observations on Mr. Hall as a Preacher,” and a new edition 
(the ninth) of the Essays, after subjecting them to a final revision 
at the suggestion of Mr. Anderson, “ the acute literary friend ” 
alluded to in the preface; besides two letters on the Church and 
the Voluntary Principle, which appeared in the Morning Chron¬ 
icle, Oct. 2,and 3, 1834; and three letters on the Ballot in the 
same Journal, April 24, 25, and 27, 1835. 

In 1837, when the Eclectic Review passed into the hands of 
its present editor, Foster allowed his name to stand in the list of 
contributors, but without pledging himself to more than an occa¬ 
sional article. In writing to Dr. Price (Feb. 24, 1837), he say^, 
“ Not one of the Oxford Tracts has come in my way. There is 
a dozen of the men named in your muster-roll, much more quali¬ 
fied than I am, to take account of such a business. But has 
that little knot of Papists any such hold on any considerable sec¬ 
tion of the ‘ religious public,’ as fairly to call for a dissenting 
proclamation against them ? In so recluse a life, I have very little 
information about the dimensions in which any religious or church 
peculiarity stands before the public. I very rarely see any of 
the contemporary publications of any kind, in books or periodi¬ 
cals, with the exception of the two leading Quarterly Reviews. 

I am sorry to be making this sort of pleading ofi*. I did, how¬ 
ever, when you were here, represent (I think very expressly) 
that I could not engage myself for more than a very inconsidera¬ 
ble and unfrequent quantum of service. If I can, or rather 
could, do anything in the composition way, there are some tasks 
for a more permanent purpose which I ought to attempt; and 
am mortified to have, from year to year, left untouched, partly 
from the miserable laboriousness to me of any sort of composi¬ 
tion, and partly from a haunting consciousness of incompetence. 

. . . . “ As to reading, why one can read little else than the 
newspapers just at present. I do not know whereabouts, on the 
thermometer, you may be in political concerns; if high, you 
will have exulted at the division in the Plouse of Commons, which 
1 have but just now seen in the Morning Chronicle.* To say 

* Lord F. Egerton’s motion^ for the abolition instead of the amendment 
of the Irish Municipal Corporations, which, after three nights’ debate, was 
rejected by 322 to 242. 



DEATH OF HIS BROTHER AND MR. FAWCETT. 145 

Jmt the present crisis is most portentous, is no common-place ex¬ 
travagance of phrase ; for evidently the consequences will, ere 
long, be dreadful, if, by tlie resistance of the execrable tory and 
church faction, the measures in favor of Ireland shall continue 
to be frustrated.” 

Within the period to which this part of the memoir relates, 
Foster was deprived of his only brother, and of one of his few 
early associates. “ As to companions and friends of early times,” 
he says,* “they have almost all left tlie world. My only brother 
(the only one who lived to maturity) died some months since, 
my junior by several years. I had not seen him for more than 
thirty years, having never, during all that time, revisited my 
native place in Yorkshire. Now 1 probably never shall; for 
the only other person, with whom I had maintained any commu¬ 
nication, Mr. Fawcett (son of Dr. Fawcett, my old tutor), a 
friend of my youth, of about the same age, and a very valuable 
man, lately went the way of all the earth. The unlooked-for 
intelligence did cause me a very pensive feeling; it broke the 
last link of my connection with the scenes and society of my 
early life; all would be strange and foreign to me if I were to go 
thither now ; very few persons alive with whom I w'as ever in 
any sense acquainted ; perhaps not one with whom it W’ould not 
be mutually a difficult effort to retrace anything in person that 
either had ever seen before. The very localities, I am told by 
one who has rather lately been there, are strangely transformed : 
—roads turned ; woods cut down ; free open tracts occupied and 
built upon ; romantic glens, where I had so many solitary ram¬ 
bles along by their wild brooks, j)^ofaned, as I should then have 
called it, if I could have anticipated such a change, by manu¬ 
factories, and the swarming, noisy activity of a population of a 
temperament infinitely alien from reflective, pensive, and imagi¬ 
native musings. 

“ It is in vain to wonder—on supposition those scenes had not 
become changed, and that I were now to revisit them, and wan¬ 
der alone a number of hours in one or another of them—how I 
should feel now in comparison (if I had remembrance enough to 
make the comparison) with the feelings of those times. But how 
emphatic would the consciousness be, that though they were the 
same, I was prodigiously changed ! Though the feelings of the 
early time might have often been pensive, tinged with a degree 

* To the Rev. .Tosiah Hill, Feb. 22, 1838. 

11 


VOL. II. 



146 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of melancholy, still there was the vital substratum, so to call it, 
of youth and anticipation. An interval of more than forty years 
makes all the difference between the morning of life and its 
evening; the mind, in the one position, occupied with imagina¬ 
tion, conjecture, possibilities, resolutions, hopes;—in the other, 
looking back to see that visionary speculation reduced to the hu- 
mility of an experience and reality, in which there is much to 
regret and much for self-reproach ; and looking forward to be¬ 
hold, in near approach, another future, of how different an aspect 
from that presented to the youthful spirit! Here, my friend, >ve 
stand, yourself at no great distance behind me. What a solemn 
and" mighty difference it is, that whereas we then beheld life be¬ 
fore us, we now behold death. Ob, what cause for earnest care, 
and strife, and supplication to heaven; that when the moment 
comes, which every moment is bringing nearer, that we shall 
have passed that portentous shade, and behold the amazing pros¬ 
pect beyond it opening upon us, it may present itself under the 
light of the divine mercy, beaming upon us from Him who has 
the keys of death and the invisible world.” 


LETTERS. 

CLXX. TO THE REV. THOMAS COLES. 

Bourton, September 13, 1832. 

My dear Sir, — In addressing to you a few lines in relation to the 
mournful scene in which we are to be indebted to your kindness on Sat¬ 
urday, I entreat you to let me fully assure myself I will not feel as if I 
were assuming to prescribe to you in your ministerial character, while 
I just take the liberty of saying what are the feelings and wishes of all 
the family party, and emphatically my own. These wishes would be 
that the service might be brief, and with the least possible of any personal 
references. 

1 am perfectly sure that the dear deceased would have earnestly de¬ 
precated any marked reference to her; and as to the survivors, all of 
them, and myself especially—I need not say you can perfectly under¬ 
stand that it is a sorrow that seeks privacy, that earnestly shrinks from 
public gaze and curiosity. 

But for the consideration of what is conventionally regarded as due on 
puch an occasion, my own preference—I may say infinite preference—? 


LETTERS. 


147 


would be that it were an office performed at midnight, in perfect silence, 
and with no attendance but that of the parties immediately concerned. 
The vulgarizing curiosity, what will be said of the deceased—how the 
survivors comport themselves, whether they appeared distressed or 
stoical—which of them the most or least—and all the other circumstan¬ 
ces of the occasion—are repugnant and irksome in the last degree. 
Therefore the utmost brevity and abstinence from personal references 
that can comport with what you can feel the propriety of the occasion, 
is what we shall feel very grateful to you to maintain. In any reference 
to the relatives, in the address or in the prayer, will you permit me to 
entreat it of your friendship not to individualize. Any distinct pointed 
reference to me individually—though I most sincerely believe that no 
man in the world would do it with more delicacy and kind appropriate¬ 
ness than yourself—would be extremely painful, so that I should ear¬ 
nestly wish each sentence and each word to be the last. If you should 
even think this a morbid excess, yet let me entreat your kind indulgence 
to the weakness : there is, at any rate, no affectation in it. 


CLXXI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL 

Bourton, September 13, 1832 ‘ 

.... It has repeatedly occurred to my thoughts there is something 
remarkably parallel between your experience and mine. You lost a 
favorite son of just, I think, the same age as mine, within a short inter¬ 
val of the same time. The duration of my happy union was nearly 
twenty-five years ; must not that have been very nearly the same term 
as in your case ? Were not you the senior to your wife by a few years ? 
So was I. Mine departed at just the age of fifty-six—how near was 
that to your wife’s ?—probably a few years less ;—perhaps, indeed, 
hardly fifty. Even you are approaching old age,—^though I suppose 
some years short of sixty-two. Both our dear wives left us at what 
might, in a certain comparative sense, be called an immature age ;—from 
fifty to fifty-six may be so accounted. Both our wives suffered a pro¬ 
tracted decline. Were not you absent at the exact moment when 
yours expired—or at least when she could speak to you no more ? Each 
of us has two surviving children. I need not add, that we both deeply loved 
them, were beloved tenderly by them—have a perfect assurance they are 
now celestially happy—would not recall them if we could—hope to meet 
them again in eternal affection. 

Do advert distinctly to each of these conjectures, when you shall favor 
me with a letter. I hope we shall return to Stapleton in less than a 
week. And a letter received from you there, as in a comparative solitude, 
will be of more value to me than received during the divers arrange¬ 
ments for moving, which will occupy the interval here, after the last sad 
transaction. 




148 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CLXXII. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

October 19. 1832. 

My DEAR Friend .If you had been personally acquainted with 

her whom the sovereign Disposer, in perfect wisdom and goodness I 
know, has taken from me, after a happy union of very nearly a quarter 
of a century, you would have had the most perfect evidence of the emi¬ 
nent value which you ascribe to her, chiefly on my own constant testi¬ 
mony. 

She was in all respects eminently estimable. Her intellect was of 
superior order ; clear, sagacious, and of extensive application. Her per¬ 
ception (that which belongs to taste and feeling rather than to bare un¬ 
derstanding) was exquisitely just and discriminative. She was consci¬ 
entious in all things ; and a habitual piety pervaded her thoughts and 
her life. But that piety was of a nature involving much that was pen¬ 
sive and even painful. She constantly said that a hard discipline had 
been requisite to establish and maintain its predominance in her spirit. 
It was apt to be invaded by gloomy sentiments respecting the awful 
moral condition of our nature, and the tremendously mysterious economy 
of the divine government of this world. This tendency, existing in a 
considerable degree from even childhood, was no doubt augmented by 
her long ill health. The exercise of fliith in the divine goodness was, 
therefore, often a painful struggle, requiring a resolute effort to repress 
the propensity to wide and gloomy speculation, and to preserve that sub¬ 
missive humility, which, however, she was enabled to preserve in an ex¬ 
emplary degree. She was rigorous of judging of herself, while (though 
of very fastidious taste) candid in judging of others—increasingly so, 
she would say, the longer she lived, and the more she reflected on the 
evils of her own mind. But she has passed out of this sphere of dark¬ 
ness, and now exults in a final deliverance from all that affects the body 
or the mind. 


CLXXIII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

October 29, 1832. 

My dear Sir,— .... Your letter, like the preceding ones, is greatly 
in sympathy with my own state and feelings. I earnestly hope there 
will be the same conformity in that most important point that you men¬ 
tion—namely, a spiritually beneficial result of the painful visitation ; and 
I hope I may say that thus far it has been so; but am very solicitous it 
may be so in permanent continuance, to the very end of life ; “ solicit¬ 
ous,” I have good reason to say, when I recollect, with deep regret, how 
many former admonitions (but none so impressive and affecting as this) 
have gradually lost their efficacy. A certain conscious tendency to re¬ 
ligious inertness has sometimes brought to me the menacing suggestion, 
that I needed some more solemn and striking measure of discipline from 





LETTERS. 


149 


the Father of spirits to rouse and impel me. I had even sometimes, 
since my loved wife’s decline in health became more sensible and threat¬ 
ening, had the pensive thought—“ Suppose she should be soon taken 
from me—how should I feel that as an admonitory chastisement ? may 
not that be inflicted upon me, to bring me nearer to God and heaven; to 
excite me to pass the residue of my time with a most constant earnest 
reference to eternity ?” That reverting to the 'past —living more in the 
past—which you describe as your experience, is partly realized in mine, 
and probably will be more so. There is a strong tendency backward to 
the periods and scenes and incidents spread over the long space of the 
more than thirty years of our mutual attachment; a recollection vivified 
at times by a look into one and another of the five hundred and more 
letters of our correspondence. But as yet, this reverting tendency is 
often interfered with by amazement at the present; by a feeling—is it 
possible that the relation between us is so changed, is become so stupen¬ 
dously different ? Can it be—how is it—what is it—that we are now not 
inhabitants of the same world—that each has to think of the other as in 
a perfectly different economy of existence ? Whither is she gone—in 
what manner does she consciously realize to herself the astonishing 
change—how does she look at herself as no longer inhabiting a mortal 
tabernacle—in what manner does she recollect her state as only a few 
weeks since—in what manner does she think, and feel, and act, and 
communicate with other spiritual beings—what manner of vision has 
she of God and the Saviour of the world—how does she review and esti¬ 
mate the course of discipline through which she had been prepared for 
the happy state where she finds herself—in what manner does she look 
back on death, which she has so recently passed through,—and does she 
plainly understand the nature of a phenomenon so awfully mysterious to 
the view of mortals ? How does she remember and feel respecting us, 
respecting me 7 Is she associated with the spirits of her departed son, 
and two children who died in infancy ? Does she indulge with delight 
a confident anticipation that we shall, after a while, be added to her so¬ 
ciety ? If she should think of it as, with respect to some of us, many 
years, possibly, before such an event, does that appear a long time in 
prospect, or has she begun to account of duration according to the great 
laws of eternity ? Earnest imaginings and questionings like these arise 
without end, and still, still, there is no answer, no revelation. The 
mind comes again and again up close to the thick black veil; but there 
is no perforation, no glimpse. She that loved me, and I trust loves me 
still, will not, cannot, must not, answer me. I can only imagine her to 
say, “ Come and see ; serve our God so that you shall come and share, 
at no distant time.” One of the most striking circumstances to my 
thouglit and feeling is, that, in devotional exercises, though she comes 
on my mind in a more affecting manner than perhaps ever, I have no 
longer to pray for her. By a momentary lapse'of thought I have been, I 
think, several times on the point of falling into an expression for her as 


150 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


if Still on earth; and the instant “No ! no more for her'' has been an 
emotion of pain, and as it were disappointment; till the thought has 
come, “ She needs not; she is now safe, beyond the sphere of mortals and 
their dangers and wants, in the possession of all that prayer implored.” 
Even after this consolatory thought there has been a pensive trace of 
feeling, something like pain, that sympathy, care for her welfare, should 
now be superfluous to her and finally extinguished. 

You mentioned having, in your recollections, felt a degree of com¬ 
punction for not having been as sedulous as you now’ feel you might 
have been, to promote the spiritual welfare of your dear departed com¬ 
panion. I believe I have more cause for such regret, and it invades me 
sometimes in a painful degree. Both my beloved associate and myself 
had the disadvantage of a naturally and habitually reserved disposition. 
Mine had been'confirmed such by my having been during all the earlier 
part of my life very much a solitary being, and during many years a 
kind of w’anderer in the earth, under circumstances which could have left 
no youthful promptitude to frank and as it w^ere necessary ingenuousness 
(if I had ever had it) at the age of thirty-seven, when the domestic union 
took place. This caused a certain inaptitude on my part, to full habitual 
communicativeness on the subject of religion as personally applied, and, 
of consequence, a very great defect of habitual effort to render such 
religious aid as I often, even then, felt that I ought, to my dear com¬ 
panion. I have sometimes now, therefore, a self-reproachful reflec¬ 
tion, which would go into something like a wish that she could be with 
me again for a wdiile, in order that I might repair that great deficiency 
in such a manner as her loss makes me feel that I ought to have been of 
this value to her. That the fault is now irreparable, absolutely and 
finally so, is at times a very painful thought. The consolation is that 
she had a divine instructor, and that the great object is accomplished. 
This, hov/ever, does not suppress the regret that she does not, in that 
happy state, owe more to me. The thought sometimes arises in my mind, 
in what manner, divested of all mutual regret, may w^e revert to this in 
our communicated reminiscences in that happy world, if, as I earnestly 
hope, I shall meet her there again, to be separated no more ? There is 
this thought again—“ What joy it will be to her if I, and if the children, 
shall then have to tell her 'and prove to her, that the sad event of our 
losing her has been rendered, by the divine Spirit, a powerful mean to¬ 
ward our better progress in that piety which shall have prepared us for 
the happy re-union.” .... 


CLXXIV. TO SIR J. EASTHOPE, BART. 

Stapleton, Feb. 8, 183.3. 

. . For myself, when I look at the dreadful array of affairs which 
Dur legislators have before them, and pressing on them close, and thick, 



LETTERS. 


151 


and immediate, I am the reverse of sanguine, whether I regard the 
question of power or of ivill. There is that most appalling state of Ire¬ 
land. I have no degree of confidence that the ministry have even the 
loiU to adopt the bold, and radical, and comprehensive measures which 
alone could avail there. How obvious is the necessity for some imperi¬ 
ous enactment, to compel that base, detestable landed interest, to take 
the burden of the poor, instead of driving them out to famish, beg, or 
rob, and murder, on the highway ; or throwing them by tens of thou¬ 
sands on our coast, to devour the means of support to our own popula¬ 
tion. It would be a measure which would first astound, but speedily 
enrage, the wdiole selfishly base proprietary of Ireland. I have no hope 
that the ministry have the resolution for so mighty a stroke ; and then 
tlie Irish church. The plain sense of the thing is, that about two-thirds, 
or rather four-fifths of it, ought to be cut dowm at once, and that propor¬ 
tion of the property applied to national uses. But the very notion of 

such a thing would be enough to consign-to one of the wards in 

St. Luke’s. And what would - say, if Lord Grey dared even to 

whisper such a thing to him ? And yet, unless some such thing be done, 
it is as clear as noon-day, that Ireland will continue a horrid scone of 
distraction and misery ; growing, month by month, more ferociously bar¬ 
barous, and to be kept down by nothing but the terror and occasional 
exploits of an immense standing army, at the cost, too, of this our own 
tax-consuming country. 

The church reform in this country, too, is to be a marvellous fine thing, 
it seems. As an economical thing, a trade and money concern, it may 
be plentifully mended if the axe and saw, and carpenter’s rule, be reso¬ 
lutely applied (which I do not expect); but as -aw ecclesiastical institution, 
an institution for religion., it is not worth reforming; indeed, cannot be 
reformed. Think of making the clergy—such a clergy as the reform- 
project declares them to be ;—think of making them pious, zealous, spi¬ 
ritual, apostolic, hy act of parliament! There is, for example, the scan¬ 
dalous amount of non-residence; this is to be corrected with a strong 
hand ; the clergy shall be compelled to reside ; what clergy shall be so 
compelled ? why, the very men whose non-residence proved they do not 
care about the spiritual welfare of the people; but only force these 
same men, by a law, sadly against their will, as the very terms imply, 
and then they will instantly become pious, faithful, affectionate pastors,—an 
unspeakable blessing to the people of every parish ! They will apply them¬ 
selves, with the utmost alacrity and assiduity, to their preaching, pray¬ 
ing, visiting the sick, &c., at the very time that they are grumbling and 
cursing at not being any longer allowed to promenade about Brighton 
or Cheltenham. This most ridiculous absurdity comes of that one grand 
corruption of Christianity—the state pretending to make religious 
churches and Christian teachers. Of religion itself, in its own proper 
essence, as a personal thing, infinitely foreign to all that legislatures can 
enact or do, these people seem not to have the slightest idea. To think 



152 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of some ten or eleven hundred senators (Lords and Commons), sapiently 
deliberating on the clauses of a bill for making, by force of said bill, the 
clergy and the people pious, spiritual, conscientious !!—and all, but a 
scantling of them, really thinking, that this manufacture can be effected 
just like any other production of mechanical machinery ! As a mere 
matter of political economy, as a more equitable distribution of emolu¬ 
ment, as a more commodious adjustment of the support of the system, as 
an aflair of decorum and better regulation in the habits of the clergy,— 
in this view of the business something may be done, and it may be well 
worth doing. In Lliis business, therefore^ let the parliamentary carpen¬ 
ters work away; but, alas for their intellects, if they imagine that they 
are creating religion in clergy or laity; they will only be putting the in¬ 
stitution in a little more respectable trim, for awaiting that final demoli¬ 
tion which is coming on all state-religious establishments. 

The session now opening will be of immense interest: it is an anxious 
and fearful question,—What will the government have done by this 
day seven'months ?” 

But, my dear friend, how many persons, who may now be taking a 
deep interest in this prospective speculation, are not to stay long enough 
in this world to see that question answered ; and how much more solemn 
a question it is to the individuals themselves ?—what their state, their 
feelings, their views, will be in a world elsewhere. Few persons, at this 
time last year, could take a deeper interest in the great reform measure, 
and the results to be hoped for from it, than she who was then my wife ; 
but she did not stay to witness any of those results, she was destined to 
behold something incomparably more new, and wonderful, and delightful, 
than anything that can come to pass in this land or on this planet; but 
how dark a veil on the whole economy of that other world ! my thoughts 
go again and again, without end, into the unanswered and unanswerable 
questions:—where and what is the region, what the manner of existence, 
what the visions, the emotions, the employment, of that other life ; and 
what the comparison between it and the life and the world from which 
the spirit has passed away ? The impatiently inquiring thoughts are still 
constantly sent back to this one consideration, that in due time we shall 
ourselves go to see; and who knows how soon that time may come ? 
At my age it cannot, at all events, be very remote ; and I am incessantly 
admonished how fast the successive portions of time are vanishing. 1 am 
almost surprised to think, that it is this day five months since my inestima¬ 
ble companion left me ; and thus, my dear friend, what may remain to us of 
life will rapidly pass away; our months, our years, if years remain, will 
each be gone almost before we are aware ; and, unless we become most 
seriously and anxiously vigilant, without our having unproved them to the 
great last purpose of life. I am often painfully, and even alarmingly, ad¬ 
monished of this last most pressing consideration ; and, I trust, my dear 
friend, it will henceforth press on your mind also with all its force ; and 
do not let your unsatisfactory remembrances of the past produce any 


LETTERS. 


153 


despondent feeling, while there is every divine assistance, so fully and 
mercifully ofibred and promised, to sincere determination and eflbrt. 
Every unfavorable habit can be corrected; every injurious influence can 
be counteracted ; religion can make us happy; and I earnestly and con¬ 
fidently hope that it will. 


CLXXV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

June 27, 1833. 

.... I have left no space of paper for commenting on your citations 
of high authorities for my indoctrination in theology, in reference to the 
oracles stated to have been pronounced by Watson. I never thought of 
questioning the fact, that many pious men have had and have, in respect 
to their being in a state of acceptance and salvation, a certain testimony 
in feeling, not very definable, and (I would not say independent of, but) 
distinguishable from, a deliberate account taken of evidences, by what 
may be called a sober, investigating self-examination ; but certainly 
there are many genuine Christians who have not, to their own conscious¬ 
ness, this happy kind of testimony ; and inasmuch as there is here a very 
great and dangerous liability to delusion, it must surely be unwise and 
pernicious'to be insisting on this to the neglect or exclusion (as W. was 
reported to have done) of all strict inquisition into the evidences of a de¬ 
finable, and so to call it, tangible kind. Have you not seen cause to be¬ 
lieve, that in your connection this has been, to very many, a fatal mis¬ 
chief ?* 

.... I am very sincerely Sorry for the calamity of so prodigious a 
loss as you are suftering in preachers; and, may I say, not sorry to hear, 
that in other respects your denomination is so flourishing. 


CLXXVI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 


July, 1833. 

.My delay in writing has been owing to an inconsiderable 

cause—that I would not write till I could mention that a parcel had been 

sent or was immediately to be sent from here.The thing to 

be packed was Brucker’s Historia Philosophue, in six quartos, a 
work of established reputation and immense learning. A number 
of years since I had it from Longman’s—a fool that I was, at my 
age, and with fast failing sight, to think of such a thing—but it 
was a famous book—a sort of dictionary of all ancient and much 
modem wisdom (and folly too), and so, seeing it in the catalogue, I must 
send for it,—and that in haste too, lest some other aspirant to wisdom, a» 

* On this subject see Foster’s Lectures XIII. False groimds of superi¬ 
ority in holiness, p. 218, 2d ed. and Rogers’ Life of Howe, pp. 495-502. 







154 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


old and with such feeble eyes and slender acquirements, should lay hands 
on it before me. But for John, voracious of knowledge, and with T hope 
at least fifty years before him, it may prove a useful repository to con¬ 
sult occasionally. When I had it, not a sheet had ever been cut open ; 
it is perfectly clean, and I took the long trouble of giving every volume 
a firmer covering by pasting mill-boards to the sides within the blue 
papers. Its disappearance here will a little abate the vexation with 
which, as I said before, I sometimes look on these piles of books which I 
can never use. 

There is nothing to tell you here. I hardly ever go into the town, and 
very seldom see any one that inhabits it. I think that, literally, I have 
spent but few hours there for several months past. There has grown 

upon me a kind of indisposition to see anybody, or to be seen.I 

shall be out of date with the few friends I have—or had—in the place. 
I just stay with the girls, who are good and affectionate, but cannot com¬ 
pensate for the companion that I have lost—but would not recall, if such 
a thing were permitted in the divine economy. The pensive sense of 
that loss is at some moments almost changed into gladness by the thought 
of what she has gained—and what she has escaped ; and by a hope that 
the dispensation will be salutary to myself, in regard to the most important 
interest. I think it has been so hitherto in some degree. It certainly 
has been made the cause of very many pious emotions, and wishes, and 
penitential regrets, and pra 3 mrs, beyond my previous habitude of mind. 
I go often into the j:as/, as you predicted ; but often the present and the 
future almost predominate—the thought of her as now, and the anticipa¬ 
tion of seeing her again, varied through innumerable suggestions, 
imaginings, and inquiries. No doubt sucfi musings have often employed 
your mind also. We must remain in this darkness, and this dissever- 
ment yet a while, perhaps but a little while. But oh ! what joy to hope 
that through sovereign mercy we shall regain, never more to lose, the 
society of our beLwed departed companions, and with the ultimate addi¬ 
tion, I hope, of all those younger ones that still remain with us. May 
the great Father of spirits take benignant charge of us all, and grant us 
all to meet at length where those who are gone before us will feel 
ecstatic joy to receive us, all redeemed through the merit of the great 
Sacrihee. Both you three and tee three have now some affecting rela¬ 
tions, points of interest and attraction, with the invisible world, more than 
we had a few years since. I liave suggested this consideration to the 
two children here. The deep interest of the subject has led me to think 
more, and to read a little more, concerning that mysterious hades. How 
strange that revelation itself has kept it so completely veiled. Many things 
in that economy probably could not be made intelligible to us in this our 
grossly material condition ; but there are many questions which could be 
distinctly and intelligibly answered. How striking to consider that those 
who were so lately, with us, asking those questions in vain, have now 
the perfect experimental knowledge. I can image the very look with 



LETTERS. 


155 


wliich my departed Maria would sometimes talk or muse on this subject. 
The mystery, the frustration of our inquisitiveness, was equal to us both. 
What a stupendous difference now I And in her present grand advantage 
she knows with what augmented interest of solemn and affectionate 
inquisitiveness my thoughts will be still directed, and in vain, to the 
subject. But she knows why it is proper that I should for a while 
continue still in the dark,—should share no part of her new and marvel¬ 
lous revelation. 


CLXXVII. TO BIRS. ANDERSON. 
fOn the death of Mr. Anderson.] 

Stapleton, 1833. 

My dear Madam, .... I was glad to hear you had changed the 
scene so far as to pass some days at Overn. The recollection of recent 
mournful events very often came on me amidst the beautiful and sublime 
scenes that I have been passing through. It appeared to me so strange 
to think that I should not have to tell of anything I had seen to the 
estimable friend with whom I had so often and so lately communicated. 
That he was actually no longer on earth seemed again and again what I 
could hardly realize as a certain fact. It was a pensive thought that 
there was one important ]>erson the less for me to return to. And the 
loss came witli double force as being in addition to the irretrievable 
absence, the final disappearance, of one other person, to whom during a 
former tour over the same interesting tracts I expected to return with 
narratives and observations which now she hears no more. 

For you there is a long train of pensive remembrances, reflections, 
and monitions ; but I trust the benign influences of religion will both 
soften the painful sentiments and render them salutary in respect to the 
highest interests. For myself I have felt that some afflictive dispensa¬ 
tion was necessary for the purpose of solemn admonition. How unapt 
we are to send forward our thoughts into the invisible future world, 
toward which we are continually approaching nearer! we have now a 
strong circumstance of attraction of our thoughts thitherward—a new 
relation formed with that world, by the removal thither, and the dwelling 
there, of those who were so lately our habitual and beloved companions 
here. 


CLXXVII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES. 

Sept. 18, 1833. 

.... The thought of my dear and ever faithful friend, as now stand¬ 
ing at the very verge of life, has repeatedly carried me back in memory 
to the period of our youth, when more than forty years we were brought 
into habitual society, and the cordial esteem and attachment which have 
survived undiminished through so long a lapse of time and so much 
separation. Then w’C sometimes conjectured, but in vain, what might be 






156 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the course appointed us to run, and how long, and which might firet 
come to the termination. Now the far greater part of that unknown 
appointment has been unfolded and accomplished. To me a little stage 
further remains under the darkness; you, my dear friend, have a clear 
sight almost to the concluding point. And while I feel the deepest pen¬ 
siveness in beholding where you stand, with but a step between you and 
death, I cannot but emphatically congratulate you. I have often felt 
great complacency in your behalf, in thinking of the course through 
which Providence has led you,—complacency in regard to the great 
purpose of life, its improvement, its usefulness, and its discipline and 
preparation for a better world. You are, I am sure, grateful to the 
sovereign Disposer in the review of it. You have had the happiness of 
faithfully and zealously performing a great and good service, and can 
rejoice to think that your work is accomplished, with an humble confi¬ 
dence that the Master will say, “ Well done,'good and faithful servant,” 
while you will gratefully exult in ascribing all to his own sovereign 
mercy in Jesus Christ. 

But oh ! my dear friend, whither is it that you are going ? Where is 
it that you will be a few short weeks or days hence. I have affecting 
cause to think and to wonder concerning that unseen world ; to desire, 
were it permitted to mortals, one glimpse of that mysterious economy, 
to ask innumerable questions to which there is no answer—what is the 
manner of existence,—of employment,—of society,—of remembrance,— 
of anticipation of all the surrounding revelations to our departed friends ? 
How striking to think, that she, so long and so recently with me here, so 
beloved, but now so totally withdrawn and absent, that she experimen¬ 
tally knows all that I am in vain inquiring ! 

And a little while hence you, my friend, will be an object of the same 
solemn meditations and wandering inquiries. It is most striking to con¬ 
sider—to realize the idea—^that you, to whom I am writing these lines, 
who continue yet among mortals, who are on this side of the awful and 
mysterious veil,—that you will be in the midst of these grand realities, 
beholding the marvellous manifestation, amazed and transported at your 
new and happy condition of existence, while your friends are feeling the 
pensiveness of your absolute and final absence, and thinking how, but 
just now, as it were, you were with them. 

But we must ourselves follow you to see what it is that the emanci¬ 
pated spirits who have obtained their triumph over death and all evil 
through the blood of the Lamb, find awaiting them in that nobler and 
happier realm of the great Master’s empire ; and I hope that your re¬ 
moval will be to your other friends and to me a strong additional excite¬ 
ment, under the influence of the divine Spirit, to apply ourselves with 
more earnest zeal to the grand business of our high calling. 

It is a delightful thing to be assured, on the authority of revelation, of 
the perfect consciousness, the intensely awakened faculties, and all the 
capacities and causes of felicity of the faithful in that mysterious, sepa- 


LETTERS. 


157 


rate state ; and on the same evidence, together with every other rational 
probability, to be confident of the reunion of those who have loved one 
another and their Lord on earth. How gloomy beyond all expression 
were a contrary anticipation! My friend feels in this concluding day 
of his sojourn on earth the infinite value of that blessed faith which 
confides alone in tlie great Sacrifice for sin—the sole medium of pardon 
and reconcilement, and the ground of immortal hope; this has always 
been to you the very vitality of the Christian religion ; and it is so—it is 
emphatically so—to me also. 

1 trust you will be mercifully supported,—the heart serene, and, if it 
may be, the bodily pain mitigated during the remaining hours, and the 
still sinking weakness of the mortal frame ; and I would wish for you 
also, and in compassion to the feelings of your attendant relatives, that 
you may be favored so far as to have a gentle dismission ; but as to this, 
you will humbly say, “ Thy will be done.” 

I know that I shall partake of your kindest wishes and remembrance 
in your prayers,—the few more prayers you have yet to offer before you 
go. When 1 may follow you, and, I earnestly hope, rejoin you in a far 
better world, must be left to a decision that cannot at the most be very 
remote; for yesterday completed my sixty-third year. I deplore before 
God my not having lived more devotedly to the grand purpose ; and do 
fervently desire the aid of the good Spirit, to make whatever of my life 
may remain much more effectually true to that purpose than all the pre¬ 
ceding. 

But you, my friend, have accomplished your business—your Lord’s 
business on earth. Go, then, willing and delighted, at his call. 

Here I conclude, with an affecting and solemn consciousness that I 
am speaking to you for the last time in this world. Adieu! then, my 
ever dear and faithful friend. Adieu—for a while ! may I meet you ere 
long where we shall never more say farewell! 


CLXXIX. TO THE REV. DR. CARPENTER.’*' 

Stapleton, Oct. 14,1833. 

Dear Sir, —My memory is so very defective that I have no doubt 
your own, and that of each of the gentlemen of the party at Stapleton 
Grove, wilLhave more faithfully retained many particulars of the con¬ 
versation with that most interesting person, the Rajah Rammohunroy. 

* This letter is taken from the Appendix to Dr. Carpenter’s Discourse 
on the death of the rajah, where it is introduced in the following terms. 
“ After I had decided to print the foregoing Discourse, I wrote the follow¬ 
ing note to the Rev. John Foster, whose religious sentiments I was well 
aware, would, in the estimation of many, give a superior sanction to his 
testimony ; and whose uprightness of mind, in connection with his well 
known acuteness of discernment, and the profound reflective character of 
his understanding would, I well knew, secure that testimony a ready recep- 



158 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


I cannot recollect whether in replying, with promptitude and the utmos» 
apparent frankness, to the respectful inquiries concerning his religious 
opinions, he expressed in so many exact words his “ belief in the divine 
authority of Christ.” But it was virtually such a declaration when he 
avowed, as he did unequivocally, his belief in the resurrection of Christ, 
and in the Christian miracles generally. At the same time he said that 
the internal evidence of Christianity had been the most decisive of his 
conviction. And he gave his opinion with some reasons for it, that the 
miracles are not the part of the Christian evidence the best adapted to 
the conviction of sceptics. 

This led one of the gentlemen to observe, that surely the sceptics 
must admit, that if the miracles recorded were real facts, they must be 
irrefragable of the truth of what they were wrought to attest; and that 
in so serious an affair the sceptics are under a solemn obligation to 
examine faithfully the evidence that they were actually wrought, which 
if they did, they would find that evidence decisive. 

The rajah instantly assented to this; but I thought I perceived by his 
manner that he had a slight surmise that the observation might possibly 
be meant to bear on himself^ with some implication of a doubt, in conse¬ 
quence of what he had said of the inferior efficacy of the proof from 
miracles, whether he had an entire conviction of the reality of those 
recorded miracles : for he said very pointedly, that any argument on that 
subject was quite superfluous as to him, for that he did believe in their 
reality. 

It was of sceptics generally that he spoke; but I thought it probable 
(from recollection of something iir one of his writings), that he had 

tion in the judgment of all who know how to appreciate him and his writ¬ 
ings. 

TO THE REV. JOHN FOSTER, STAPLETON. 

Great George Street, Oct. 12, 1833. 

Dear Sir, —You cannot have forgotten the remarkable conversation at 
Stapleton Grove on the 11th ult., principally between Dr. Jerrard and the 
rajah, on the subject of the extent and reasons of the Christian belief of 
the latter. May I solicit your opinion as to the correctness of the follow¬ 
ing position—that the rajah’s declarations at that time authorize the con¬ 
viction that he believed in the divine authority of Christ, though he rested 
this belief on internal evidence; and that he believed in the resurrection 
of Christ ? 

May I further ask, if anything that passed elsewhere in your hearing 
threw any doubt into your mind whether he believed in the divine authority 
of Christ ? 

If you deem the position corject, and answer the inquiry in the nega¬ 
tive, may I, to that extent, speak of you as among others at the conversa¬ 
tion to which I refer ? I am, &.c. 

Lant Carpenter. 

To this I received the following reply, which must set the question at 
rest. For the fulness of its statement, and for the permission to employ 
it, I feel greatly obliged to Mr. Foster, as will also many other friends of 
the rajah.”— Dr. Carpenter^s Discourse (Appendix F.), pp. 82, 83. 


LETTERS. 


159 


especially in his mind the Hindoo sceptics, whose imaginations have 
been so familiarized with the enormous prodigies of the Brahminical 
mythology, that, in spite of their rejecting them as monstrous fables, 
they retain an exaggeration of ideas, an incapacity of apprehending the 
true proportions of things, which will not allow them to see anything 
great and impressive in the far less prodigious wonders of the Jewish 
and Christian Scriptures : besides this their revolt from the belief of the 
fabulous miracles creates in them a tendency, unchecked by any due 
strength and discrimination and reason, to reject all others. 

In the conversation with the rajah in a party who had the gratifica¬ 
tion of meeting him in a few days later, there was not any distinct re¬ 
ference to his religious opinions. It turned on the moral political state 
and prospects of India ; and on the elucidation, at great length, of certain 
dogmas of the Indian philosophers. 

If these few sentences can'be of the smallest use to you, in any state¬ 
ment you may have to make or maintain respecting the rajah’s ^profes¬ 
sions on the subject of religion, they are quite at your service for that 
purpose. I am, &c., J. Foster. 


CLXXX. TO MISS SHEPPARD. 


Jan. 17, 1834. 

Madam,— .... While I must, and without the least affectation, 
attribute to the warmth of a youthful spirit, certain friendly excess in 
your estimate of what I have endeavored in the way of writing, I cannot 
but be gratified that it has been the means of imparting some pleasure 
and some improvement to such a mind. Nor can I be willing to enter¬ 
tain the ungracious anticipation (according to my own experience, in 
regard to some books and some kinds of waiting), that at some future 
time, when the youthful feelings shall be somewhat cooled, when your 
judgment shall have become more rigorous, and your taste more fastidi¬ 
ous, you will altogether revolt from the style of sentiment which has had 
your approbation in the juvenile season. At least, as far as relates to 
religion, I trust you will always be substantially in agi’eement with the 
principles and intention of those pages, whatever color of sentiment and 
cast of composition you may hereafter come to prefer. 

Do you ever, now in your prime, look forward, through an extended 
course of years (which I hope is reserved for you on earth), to imagine 
what changes time may work in your feelings and tastes ? 

'Perhaps it is well an animated young person cannot do this success¬ 
fully. But in the advance of life, and progress of intellectual and 
moral discipline, you will come to feel that you are on a somewhat dif¬ 
ferent tract of existence; that you are more apt to descry faults and 
make exceptions; that you are more slow to make a favorable judg¬ 
ment ; that your approbation (I mean not of books merely, but of senti- 



160 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ments, language, characters, human beings, conduct, almost e\'erything) 
is more limited, more cautious, less complacent; that many pleasing 
things have lost much of the brightness and attraction they had in the 
morning of life. This, in a measure, at least, is the inevitable experi¬ 
ence of advancing life. It is unpleasing, it is grievous, that it should 
be so. But never mind, if the grand chief business of life go on well. 
If there be a maturation of judgment, a constant progress to a confirmed 
state of wisdom, excellence, and piety, we can aflbrd to lose the vernal 
luxury of life, obtaining more, beyond comparison, than a compensation 
for the loss. And besides, religion has an invaluable power of preserving 
the animation of the soul, after the other sources of it become less co¬ 
pious, and some of them are dried up. An humble assurance of the 
divine favor, the consciousness of faithfully endeavoring to serve God, 
and the prospect into immortal life, for which that service is the pre¬ 
paration and introduction, will be a spring of vital, and sometimes vivid 
sentiment, when life has passed away from its youthful animation, or is 
declining into decay toward its conclusion. 

Nevertheless I will congratulate my unknown friend on her youth, 
when the mind and the heart are in full activity, with all the fresh 
vigor of feeling ; since I can assure myself she is resolved to secure the 
highest advantage of her life, by the best exercise and improvement of 
her faculties, and their consecration to the noblest purpose of existence. 

I hardly know how I have been led into this kind of observations, but 
let me assure you, they are not meant as one of the grave, cold lectures, 
of age to youth. I wish you may, as long as possible, retain the delight¬ 
ful interest of that stage of life, and may have the least possible cause to 
regret it when it shall be past. Your kind and too flattering reference to 
the pleasure and advantage you have derived from my printed writings, 
claims from me all the cordial good wishes for your happiness in every 
respect. With which I am, madam. 

Very truly yours, J. Foster. 


CLXXXI. TO JOHN SHEPPARD, ESQ. 

Jan. 23,‘ 1834. 

.... There seems to be, in the lingo of criticism, a certain facti¬ 
tious law or standard of poetry, by authority of which the critic (or 
would-be critic) shall take upon him to pronounce—“ This is”—or “ this 
is not, poetry”—often, most likely, not knowing exactly what he means. 
I wonder whether Lord Byron did, when he pronounced, as I have seen 
him quoted somewhere, that Cowper’s writings were not poetry. » 
But whatever poetry may really be (and whether it be yet settled 
among them what it is, is more than I know), I can see no manner of 
reason why just and interesting thoughts, on any subject, but especially 
a serious and elevated one, should not be given out in verse, if the writer 
be adequately master of that mode of constructing language. And if 
tlie structure be smooth and easy to read, and the diction be perspicuous, 



LETTERS. 


161 


natural, and uncontorted, the majority of readers would prefer to have 
an imaginative subject dn a poetic form. Simplicity, naturalness of dic¬ 
tion, is a grand merit, utterly forfeited by many of our aspirants, both 
in verse and prose, while aiming at effect, as they call it, by artificial 
trickery, or by a stately, stilted march of language. An artificial style 
of composition can please only when it has the exquisite grace and 
finish, and clear-pointed thought of Pope, or the power and dignity of 
Milton. One does not forget Johnson’s observation, that Cato’s Soliloquy 
is an instance to prove, that the most solemn and elevated thought may 
be, in the most impressive manner, conveyed in language of the utmost 
simplicity. 

.... It does always appear to me very unaccountable (among, in¬ 
deed, so many other inexplicable things), that the state of the soul, after 
death, should be so completely veiled from our serious inquisitiveness. 
That in some sense it is proper that it should be so, needs not be said. 
But is not the sense in which it is so, the same sense in which it is pro¬ 
per there should be punitive circumstances, privations, and inflictions, in 
this our sinful state ? For one knows not how to believe, that some 
revelation of that next stage of our existence would not be more influ¬ 
ential to a right procedure in this first, than such an absolute unknown. 
It is true, that a profound darkness, which we know we are destined 
ere long to enter, and soon to find ourselves in an amazing light, is a 
striking object of contemplation. But the mind still, again and again, 
falls back from it, disappointed and uninstructed, for want of some de¬ 
fined forms of reality, to seize, retain, and permanently occupy it. In 
default of revelation, we have to frame our conjectures on some principle 
of analogy which is itself arbitrary, and without any means of bringing 
it to the test of reason. 

.... It is a subject profoundly interesting to myself; my own ad¬ 
vance into the evening of life is enough to make it so ; and then the 
recent events ! You have your own special remembrances, though, as to 
several of the objects, going to a considerable time back. I have one 
most interesting recent object; and there are—were— Hall, Anderson, 
Hughes; where, and what are they now ? at this very instant how ex¬ 
isting, how employed ?....! have but just room for kind remembrances 

to the yet living.The rapid passing away of life ! In looking 

back last week, into one of my early letters, to her who has left me, I 
found that it is exactly thirty years since I became acquainted with you 
and them. I am still, my dear sir. 

Yours, most cordially, J. Foster. 


CLXXXII. TO THE REV. DR. LEIFCHILD. 

March 1834. 

.... I passed some time with him [Mr. Hughes] in the Academy, 
ending 179J, 1792. We both had all the spirit of youth, and were very 
VOL. II. 12 



162 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


confidentially intimate. But I then went away to various distances, and 
did not see him for some years, nor exchange with him but the fewest 
letters. I hardly know how this happened, but I was led into widely 
different associations, though hardly into any equally intimate friendship. 

I subsequently passed some months at Battersea, chiefly in his house; 
but since that period have rarely seen him, and that only in short snatches 
of time, which occurred in his Bible Society journeys. Nor was our 
correspondence more frequent than those brief interviews. All this 
time, nevertheless, we maintained (1 can answer for myself, and I think 
for him also) a fixed sincere regard for each other, not altered by time 
or absence. It may be necessary to add, that though invincibly amiable 
to each other, we difTered on various points, and good-humoredly rated 
each other upon them when we met. This did not at all unsettle the 
firmly established mutual esteem, whate\-er it might do with the com¬ 
placency of an occasional short season of intercourse. But I shall convey 
a wrong impression, if anything I have suggested should seem to say that 
the friendship between us was slight. It was firm, cordial, unalterable, 
in spite of personal non-intercourse and slight shades of difference. 

He had great mental activity, quickness of apprehension, and discrim¬ 
inate perception. He had considerable ambition of intellectual superiority, 
but less I think for any purpose of ostentation than for the pleasure of 
mental liberty and power. He was apt, like other young men, to be 
somewhat dazzled by the magniloquent style in writing ; but at the same 
time always justly appreciated plain, strong, good sense, whether in 
books, sermons, or conversation. A defect of simplicity and obvious 
directness in his own writing and preaching, was, I think, riot a little 
owing to his admiration at the time in question (and I suppose an earlier 
one) of certain writers of the eloquent class whose style was somewhat 
stilted—too artificial and rhetorical. His preaching, as a young man, 
was often very animated, rather unmethodical and diffuse, and extremely 
rapid; in this last respect in perfect contrast to liis pulpit exercises 
towards the close of life. His temperament was \fhat is called mer¬ 
curial ; lively, hasty, eaimest, versatile, and variable. He was kind and 
candid, yielding the sympathies of friendship, warm in its feelings, and 
prompt in its appropriate offices; free from acrimonious and resentful 
feelings, and from those minor perversities of temper or whim, which, 
without being regarded as great faults, are very annoying in social life. 
There is nothing I retain a stronger impression of, than the proofs he 
habitually manifested of a sincere and firmly established piety, which so 
attempered his youthful vivacity as to restrain it in its gayest indulgences 
and sallies from degenerating into an irreligious or in any other way 
offensive levity. I can remember that in hours when we gave the 
greatest social indulgence to our youthful spirits, he would fall on 
serious observations and reflections, in the unforced and easy manner 
which indicated the prevalence of serious interest in his mind. The 
nold which the great and vital principles of religion had upon him was 


LETTERS. 


163 


not slackened by his indecision, his incompleteness of theological system; 
respecting secondary points of doctrine. His public discourses were too 
little in obvious and studied conformity to any established model to be 
acceptable to a considerable portion of his hearers. In addition, his 
voice would sometimes, independently of his will and almost of his 
consciousness, take and retain through the whole service a pitch above 
its natural tone, necessarily causing an unpleasant monotony, which had 
a disadvantageous effect, as it always must, for attraction and impression. 
But I think that he was oftener in possession of his natural voice. 


CLXXXIII. TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE. 

[The Established Church and the Voluntary Principle.J 

October 2, 1834. 

Sir,— As a quiet observer of the agitation of the public mind on the 
subject of the established church, and in respect especially to the pre¬ 
dicted consequences of its supposed downfall, I hear and see a confident 
utterance of notions and prognostications which cause me some degree 
of wonder, and no small degree of perplexity. By the downfall of the 
establishment, I mean not anything so undefined as that for which some 
of the dissenters have petitioned, and which a certain small portion of the 
clergy are understood to desire; without having precisely explained, or 
perhaps even distinctly conceived, the intended import of their phrase, 
“ Separation of the Church and State but plainly a discontinuance, a 
dissolution of the church as a national institution, by an abrogation of all 
peculiar privileges of the clergy, and a transfer of the temporal property 
of the church to the general service of the nation ; thus leaving the 
whole weight of the public ministration of religion to subside and rest 
upon what has come to be denominated the voluntary principle. 

I arn given to understand (that is, if 1 can or could) that such an event 
would involve an extinction, nearly, of the knowledge and observance of 
Christianity, followed by the prevalence of an atheistical recklessness and 
moral barbarism: only somewhat qualified, but not rendered much less 
noxious, by a blending in some portions of the community a wild 
fanaticism. Assertions or assumptions to this effect have ’been re¬ 
peatedly made in parliament, in speeches elsewhere, and in journals of 
extensive circulation and influence. These are, it is true, the vaticina¬ 
tions of the ultra class of seers; but many of the advocates of the 
establishment are holding a language not very far short of this, in pro¬ 
claiming the disastrous consequences that would follow on its fall. 

In requesting admission for a few sentences of inquisitive comment on 
this representation, I will decline any reference to the fact so often alleged 
in argument by the opponents of ecclesiastical establishments, that the 
Christian religion originally made its way extensively in the world, not 
only without the patronage of the secular authorities, but in defiance of 




164 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


their enmity and power. Nor will I insist on the question, whether it be 
consistent with piety and reason to suppose that the divine Author of 
Christianity should suffer that one thing, which is transcendently the 
best on earth, and the object of his peculiar care, to depend for its effec¬ 
tive existence on arrangements in the political constitution of a nation; 
insomuch that, though it have taken deep root in the land, it may be sub¬ 
ject to wither to death under an enactment to withdraw from it a certain 
portion of secular privilege and emolument. Passing by such ’general 
considerations, let us see what may be, in this country at this time, the 
probabilities in favor of religion, supposing it to fall off from its formal 
junction with the state. 

And first, I should like to know, from the foretellers of such fearful 
consequences of the supposed event, what is their real deliberate esti¬ 
mate, in respect to religion in the community, of the dissenters and their 
operations. In a survey of the country there are brought in our view 
several thousand places of public worship, raised at their expense, many 
of them large, many of the smaller ones under the process, at any given 
time, of being enlarged, with the addition of many new ones every year. 
And I believe a majority of them are attended by congregations which 
may be described as numerous, in proportion to their dimensions and the 
population of the neighborhood. So that if the dissenters be somewhat 
too sanguine in assuming that their numbers would already be found, on 
a census of the whole country, fully equal to the attendants of the 
churches of the establishment (in most of the great towns they far ex¬ 
ceed), there is every probability that their rapid augmentation will very 
soon bring them to an equality. The Wesleyan Methodists are includ¬ 
ed ; since the church must, in common sense, forego any pretension to 
claim them—till they will submit their chapels to episcopal consecration, 
with its consequences—till they deem episcopal ordination'indispensa¬ 
ble, in substitution for the hierarchical fiat of their conference, to qualify 
their preachers—and surrender their whole independent system to be 
extinguished under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 

With respect to the ministers of these several thousand congregations, 
I do not hear from any quarter a denial that in general they are zealous 
and diligent in their vocation—in very many instances eminently so. 
Even thfe charges so often made against them of fanaticism, enthusi¬ 
asm, restless proselytizing, bold intrusion, and the like, convey an ac¬ 
knowledgment that they are not lazy in their work. If to the number, 
combined with the average length of their weekly public services, be 
added the consideration that nearly the whole is at the expense of their 
own mental exertion, it will appear that in the proportion of public ex¬ 
ercise they very greatly exceed the generality of the established clergy. 
And, if I may believe testimony on all hands, in addition to a rather 
extensive observation, what is it that in substance they press on the 
attention of the people, under all the diversities of manner, and inequali¬ 
ties or defects of talent and attainment, but the infinite importance -of 


LETTERS. 


165 


their spiritual and eternal concerns ; with an inculcation of those prin¬ 
ciples of faith and practice which are indispensable to their final safety ? 
thus aiming at what I suppose to be the object of the institution of a 
Christian ministry. 

Notwithstanding their dissent from the church, and their sectarian 
differences among themselves, I believe it is beyond all dispute that a 
very great majority of them maintain a much nearer conformity in doc¬ 
trine to the articles of the established church, excepting the minor, cere¬ 
monial, and merely ecclesiastical points, than the majority of its own 
clergy. I am authorized, also, to assert, with perfect confidence, that 
there is very rarely in their public ministrations any hostile allusion to 
the establishment, or anything said in praise, or even in vindication, of 
dissent. 

In the economy of protestant dissent there is one distinctive fact of 
high importance, and so nearly universal that the exception must be very 
small—the requirement of personal religion as essential in the qualifica¬ 
tions of a minister ; I mean that he be habitually and seriously intent 
on the cultivation of piety in his own mind, with a view to his own last 
account—his own final safety. In so very numerous a class it is inevi- 
talde that there will be admitted some false pretenders, and that there 
will occur too many lapses of human frailty in such as are not hypo¬ 
crites. But these examples when exposed are branded with a peculiar 
opprobrium, for the very reason that personal piety is in them an avowed 
and perfectly understood sine qua non. They must afford satisfactory 
cause for the people’s believing them to be such. I need not ask you 
whether there be any existing ecclesiastical institution in which evidence 
of such a qualification is not held indispensable, is not even brought 
under question, as a requisite to official competence for the consecrated 
profession. 

Not to lengthen this statement till I incur the suspicion of being a 
partisan, I will but just mention the great, I may soberly say the pro¬ 
digious, exertions of the dissenters in the promotion of education among 
the poor—in local plans of charitable visitation and instruction—and in 
wider and very costly schemes and combinations for the extension of 
religion both at home and in foreign regions. And is it, or is it not, the 
genuine Christian religion that they are thus multiplying and extending 
their activity to promote ? Any assertion or doubt set up against the 
affirmative by the supporters of the church, provided they really believe 
its authorized doctrines, must fall before the fact, which I re-assert on 
the most extensive evidence, that by far the greater proportion of the 
dissenting ministers insist earnestly on what will on all hands be ac¬ 
knowledged the most essential and distinctive in the theology of that 
church’s articles, understood in their plain, unsophisticated sense, which 
they admit, while the more numerous proportion of the clergy evade 
them. 

If, further, it should be alleged against those preachers, that many of 


166 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


them are grossly defective in mental cultivation—that, from a deficient 
education, their preaching, even though it were right in point of doctrine, 
is illiterate, crude, and vulgar, I suspect this opinion is taken up on a 
very limited and unfortunately directed observation ; and, at any rate, 
the dissenters in general are, as 1 am informed, completely aware of the 
indispensable necessity of a sound, intellectual, and literary discipline to 
qualify their ministers, and support numerous seminaries for that pur¬ 
pose. 

And now, sir, I come to the point in view. Seeing that the dissenters 
perform already so very large a proportion of whatever is done for reli¬ 
gion among the people, I ask, in honest simplicity, looking only thus far, 
how there should be so overwhelming a ruination to the cause of Chris¬ 
tianity in the supposed event of the fall of the establishment ? Is it in 
mere and temporary competition with the church, and not from any sin¬ 
cere concern for religion itself, or the welfare of the people, that they 
are prosecuting all these operations, at so immense a cost of labor and 
pecuniary expense; so that, on condition the church became silent, they 
would gladly save their toil and money, and surrender the people to 
ultra paganism—paganism without a God ? Instead of remitting their 
exertions, would they not feel themselves called upon, if possible, to 
double them ? Would any one of their meeting-houses be shut up ; or 
would not, instead, new ones be raised, in hitherto unoccupied districts, 
with a rapidity even surpassing that which has, of late years, excited 
the surprise of every one in the habit of extensively traversing the 
country ? Would their congregations forthwith dwindle, as under a 
pestiferous blast; or would they not rather receive a great accession of 
attendants, even though it were in virtue solely of that principle or in¬ 
stinct in the human mind, that something of the nature of religion is 
indispensable ? And as to the religious and moral effect of all this on 
the people, I confess, that with every wish to be impartial, I cannot but 
see the influence of the dissenting ministry on those who attend it, is, 
on the average, at least, as beneficial as that of the church on its division 
of attendants. 

According, however, to some of our augurs, it is not in prostration 
and silence that religion would perish on the dissolution of the church ; 
for that event, they tell us, would let loose, like tEoIus with his winds, 
a wild fanaticism, to result in a boundless confusion of all manner of 
fantastic notions and conflicting sects. But does any sober man believe 
that the Establishment is actually, at present, of any avail to restrain 
such lawless elements ? over the dissenters it evidently can have no such 
power ; they may, for anything it can do, abuse their freedom into as 
many sectarian follies as they please; not the most petty heresiarch 
among them ever thinks of asking its leave. If its articles contribute 
anything to keep them right, it is merely on the strength of their sup¬ 
posed intrinsic scriptural authority, which would remain just where it is, 
though the ecclesiastical institution were abolished; and, let me ask, 


LETTERS. 


167 


what power of restraining to an uniformity of doctrine is maintained 
over even its own members by a church which is suffering within itself 
an almost moital schism, in an utter contrariety of opinion on the most 
important of its doctrines, between the larger portion of its clergy, and 
that smaller, but increasing one, which is growing so much in favor 
with the people; not to mention those recent wildest extravagances and 
novelties of which the church has had a much greater share than all the 
dissenting sects together. 

Thus lar, sir, I lind no way out of that “ perplexity ” which I began 
by confessing to you. But this is only half my difficulty. I now turn 
from the dissenters directly to the church itself, in the inquiry after the 
consequences of its supposed downfall; still meaning by that term its 
reduction to the equal ground with the other religious parties, of main¬ 
taining its ministry by the voluntary support of those who approve it. 
That event being supposed, what am I to expect would follow ? Would 
the clergy, thereupon, all in a body renounce their vocation; would they, 
with one consent, refuse to preach ? Would they, in word and act, 
declare that, since the Christian religion is no longer established and 
endowed as a part of the national constitution, they care nothing about 
it; and that, as to the people, they are not worth preaching to ? Should 
we see one church, and another, and another, shut up in solitary gloom; and 

hear the passing townsman, or villager, or rustic, saying, “ Dr.-(or 

Mr.-), has told us he has no more to say to us ; we may go to what 

he calls the conventicle, if we like, or, if we like it better, to the ale¬ 
house ; and the parson is off—we don’t know whither ?” Am I seriously 
required to believe the clergy so indifferent to the sacred calling to which 
they have been “ moved by the Holy Ghost,” and to the welfare of their 
docks ? No, it will perhaps be replied, they would be willing and most 
desirous to continue their ministrations, but how could they be supported 
when the income was gone ? They could not preach and starve. Now 
I must confess my amazement at hearing such language. Do they 
ever take one minute’s trouble to think how so numerous a dissenting 
ministry can subsist, in communities who have besides, the expense of 
building, enlarging, and keeping in repair their places of worship, with 
all the additionals of schools, &.C., &c. ? Or have they ever heard of 
such a thing as the Catholic priesthood of Ireland ? The adherents of 
the church possess the far greater share of the wealth of the nation ; they 
affirm, that they are the vastly preponderant body in every way; they 
profess a zealous and affectionate attachment to the venerable institu¬ 
tion for its spiritual excellence ; and they have on their side the main 
strength of the hereditary prejudices of the people. What then are we 
really to understand, that, in spite of all this, a voluntary support of their 
clergy is a desperate thing to be calculated on or thought of ? Is it, 
when the truth is known, come to this, that the supporters and adher¬ 
ents of the church do not, after all, care enough about religion, or for 
the Christian services of their clergy, to maintain a Christian ministry 


168 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


in the same manner as the dissenters are doing ? Is that an example 
of pious liberality and zeal far above their imitation ? What! come to 
them for money in support of their religion, and there’s an end of it! 
Sacred in their eyes as is their church, more sacred still are their coffers 
and their purses ! But then is it not extremely remarkable, that the dis¬ 
senting cause should have found out, and drawn to itself, extracted, as 
it were, from the community, just that portion of it which does care 
enough about the matter, which is willing to be at the expense of a 
Christian ministry; leaving the rest under the imputation, the just im¬ 
putation, on the above supposition, as far as I, in my simplicity, can see, 
of setting a lower value on their souls, or, at least, on the means of their 
instruction and salvation ? 

I have heard it alleged, that however it might fare with the people in 
the towns and the districts, thickly inhabited, the rural tracts, with a 
scanty population, would be left in a total destitution of religious advan¬ 
tages. Did the foretellers of this consequence ever traverse any consi¬ 
derable part of Wales, where they would see an almost endless succession 
of meeting-houses, in tracts where a few humble-looking habitations, 
scattered over a wide neighborhood, give immediate evidence of a thin 
population and the absence of wealth ? And, if I am not much misin¬ 
formed, such proofs of the productive activity of the “ dissenting inter¬ 
est,” as it i^ called, have begun to appear in scores, or rather hundreds, 
of the thinly-inhabited districts of England ? a representation confirmed 
by the frequent complaints of clergymen in such localities, that their 
parishes are becoming deformed by such spectacles—“ nuisances,” in the 
language of some of them ; “ schism-shops” is the denomination I have 
oftenest heard. The means for raising these edifices have been contri¬ 
buted by the liberality of dissenting communities at a distance, for the 
most part, from the places themselves. And, according to my informa¬ 
tion, the religious services, in many of them, are kept up gratuitously, in 
consideration of the poverty of the rural attendants, by the extra labors 
of ministers in the nearest situations, assisted by zealous and intelligent 
religious laymen, possessing and cultivating a faculty for public speak¬ 
ing. 

Now, after such statements, can I hear without mightily marvelling, 
that on supposition that the church, as an endowed establishment, 
were to fall, the whole resources of its present immense community, the 
combination and co-operation of all their opulence, education, and reli¬ 
gious zeal—their myriad of accomplished clergymen’s (not a few of 
them,' by-the-bye,' men of independent property) ascendency in many 
ways over the minds of the people—and their possession of all the 
churches, clear of that incumbrance of debt, which I am told lies heavy 
on many of the dissenting meeting-houses ; that all this together would 
still leave the church party in hopeless inability and despondence of sup¬ 
porting a Christian ministry in the poorer districts, to save the people 
from barbarism, practical atheism, or the fanaticism which they tliink 
would be nearly as bad ? 


LETTERS. 


169 


In my next letter I shall suggest a few considerations, more especially 
applicable to that party in the church denominated evangelical. 


CLXXXIV. TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE. 

[The Evangelical Clergy.] 

Oct. 3 , 1834 . 

Sir—I n my former letter, the bearing of my observations was directed 
to the church party generally and collectively considered, as all concur¬ 
ring in the solemn protest against the supposed change; and I have but 
slightly noticed a certain distinction and division within that body; the 
distinction marked by the appropriation to a portion of its clergy and 
other members of the epithet evangelical, by assumption on the one side, 
and derisive concession on the other. The number of the clergy so 
designated I have seen estimated, I think, in some of the publications in 
their interest, at as many as one-seventh or one-eighth of the whole. 
They are for the most part, I am informed, quite as zealous as any of the 
others for upholding the establishment, and affected with equal horror at 
the idea or the omens of its fall. I hope to be pardoned for directing the 
argument, before I conclude, specially and respectfully to them. 

If such a thing could happen as my being in a company of them, on 
terms that would admit of a reference to the subject without discourtesy, 
1 can imagine myself addressing them to some such effect as the follow¬ 
ing:—Very greatly, gentlemen, honoring your piety, sincerity, and dili¬ 
gence, I yet do not assume to be theologian enough to pronounce on the 
difference of religious faith which marks you off in such prominence and 
insulation from the great majority of your clerical brethren; but, allowing 
that you may be in the right, I have then to suggest a consideration or 
two, somewhat ad Iwminem, respecting your anxiety and alarm for the 
permanence of the establishment. You say, and I would believe you, 
that your great concern, for yourselves and the people to whom you 
minister, is religion itself, as an affair between the soul and God, consist¬ 
ing in the knowledge and efficacy of divine truth; that, as to any eccle¬ 
siastical institutions, framed and established by the government of a 
nation, you value them no otherwise, and no further, than as they are 
adapted to promote among tlie people that grand interest, by a pure faith¬ 
ful ministration of religious truth ; and that, therefore, your attachment 
to the existing establishment is from a deliberate conviction that it is in 
some way or other so adapted. You will, I doubt not, allow me to add 
for you, that any such institution which, on a great scale, and during a 
long tract of time, practically fails of operating effectually to this its great 
and only purpose, must bring its adaptedness deeply in doubt. Either its 
constitution must be unsound, or its administration most unfortunate. 
And if the vice which appears in the administration be but the natural 
result of the constitution, then the whole contrivance falls under a fatal 



170 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


couviction. Nobody has to learn that every institution, however excel- 
Itt't in theory, is liable, from human folly and depravity, to perversions in 
its administration. But if the practical working of an institution be 
generally, predominantly, through successive ages and all the change of 
times and circumstances, renegade from the primary intention, this would 
seem to betray that there must be, in the very construction itself essen¬ 
tially, a strong propensity and aptitude to corruption ; that a good design 
has been committed to the action of a wrong machinery for making it 
effective; that the instrument intended for the use of a good spirit, is 
found commodiously fitted to the hand of a darker agent. 

I am not, you will observe, expressing any opinion on the abstract 
question of the necessity or possible advantage of a religious establish¬ 
ment, but commenting on the actual church establishment of this country. 
Now, then, I would say to you, with deference, take an impartial view 
of the English church, through a duration of nearly two centuries, and 
at the present time. You well know that, with all its amplitude of powers 
and means—its many thousands of consecrated teachers, of all degrees— 
its occupancy of the whole country—its prescriptive hold on the people’s 
veneration—its learning, its emoluments, and its intimate connection 
with all that w^as powerful in the state—it did, through successive gene¬ 
rations, leave the bulk of the population, for whose spiritual benefit it was 
appointed, in the profoundest ignorance of what ijou consider as the only 
genuine Christianity. 

But this is greatly understating the case : for it not only did not teach 
what you so consider; it taught, and effectually taught, in spite of its^ 
creed on paper, what you esteem to be not genuine Christianity; what 
you regard, if I can at all understand the strain of your preaching, as 
fatal error. Why did it so, if it really was adapted to do just the con¬ 
trary ? And this it did in undisturbed continuance, under the sanction 
of the combined secular and ecclesiastical authority, in w’hose judgment 
it did not by all this forfeit its claims. It was held to be a good and 
inviolable institution, the best model of a Christian church notwith¬ 
standing. 

Such was, for incomparably the greater part, its administration. Now 
since all this while it possessed no intrinsic power in its constitution to 
redeem itself from being thus made an instrument of fatal mischief, you 
will pardon me for doubting whether that constitution itself was not 
corrupt. 

You gladly retreat from this point of review; and take your stand on 
the present state of the church, in which you say that a better spirit is 
at last arising; and therefore you would regard its supposed fall as a 
dreadful calamity, involving little less than ruin to the cause of religion 
in the land. By this better spirit, I must understand you to mean, that 
many ministers like yourselves are appearing in the church, who incuB 
cate religion in that form which has fixed on you and them, for praise 
and opprobrium, the distinctive epithet evangelical. I believe you all 


LETTERS. 


171 


insist on the vast importance of exhibiting religion in that form; declar¬ 
ing the doctrines so distinguished to be of the very essence and vitality 
of Christianity; insomuch that the contradiction or suppression of them 
radically vitiates a minister’s religious teaching. But now let me remind 
you what a small minority, notwithstanding all the recent accessions, 
you form of the ministers C)f the church ; and seriously ask you what you 
can deliberately think of the principle and tendency of an institution 
under the appointment and sanction of which, perhaps six-sevenths or 
more of the religious instructors are, as in your judgment they must be, 
misleading the people in respect to infinitely the most momentous of their 
concerns. Are you never, in your pulpits, when solemnly enforcing the 
evangelical principles, intruded upon by the image of the matfiy thousands 
of congregations listening, at that very hour, to doctrines virtually or 
avowedly opposite to your’s, in churches which they attend in the un¬ 
doubting confidence that the religious ministration in an institution sanc¬ 
tioned by venerable antiquity, and all the authority of the realm, must be 
right ? On retiring, you have to strike the balance between the good 
and evil effected on the self-same Sunday by the institution which you 
extol. 

You will not accuse me of exaggerating the opposition and alienation 
under which you stand for your religion’s sake, when you think of the 
various, numberless, and often bitter manifestations of antipathy on the 
part of the majority: how you are declaimed against as enthusiasts, in¬ 
flating some of your hearers with spiritual pride, tuming others of them 
gloomy and sometimes mad; how you are described as a mischievous 
sect within the church, and betraying it; and what controversial labors 
of the clerical pen there have been to explode your tenets and pretensions. 
And all this, in spite of your earnest, reiterated declarations of devoted 
fidelity to the church ; declarations sedulously endeavored to be verified 
in many instances, as I am told, by a careful avoidance of communication 
with dissenters, who hold and preach the very doctrines for which you 
are thus spurned and defamed by your own brethren. 

Now, such being tfie disposition of the far greater part of the church, 
with regard to what you esteem as exclusively the evangelical and saving 
faith, what are those consequences which you anticipate with such dis¬ 
may, on the supposition of its fall? In the first place, as to yourselves, 
the evangelical party, would you thereupon cease to preach? Surely, it 
may be assumed that instead of abandoning your vocation, you would 
become even still more zealously intent on prosecuting its grand object; 
and you would have a much enlarged scope and freedom, by the breaking 
away of canonical restrictions: but how to be supported ? I may answer 
that you say, or it is said by your friends, that your congregations are 
generally speaking more numerous, more pious, and more personally 
attached, than in the other portions of the church. Would all their 
warm feeling shrink into niggardliness ? would they betray that, after 
all, they are only worshippers of mammon, as soon as there came upon 


172 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


them the duty of contributing to a liberal provision for their valued spi¬ 
ritual instructors ? Is this your estimate of their piety and affection—> 
and that, too, while you see what is done under so many disadvantages 
by the dissenters ? Besides, many individuals among you are persons 
of independent means; and there is no small portion of wealth in that 
division of the community which separates off from the main body of the 
church in preference for your ministrations. Will you pardon me if I 
add, that if the event in question should reduce'some of you to a less 
genteel station and style of life, I do not see why that should be deemed 
an insupportable affliction, or how it should destroy and neutralise the 
value of your Christian labors ? Probably none of you prosecute those 
labors with happier effect than some of those who are far enough below 
a competence for maintaining that style. 

In the next place, what are you prepared to say respecting that much 
greater proportion of persons in the sacred profession, whom you pronounce, 
both expressly and virtually, to be no true ministers of the gospel, there¬ 
fore no safe guides of the people to salvation ? In so pronouncing, 
you say they ought never to have been in the profession. But is it not a 
strange dilemma that for this most valid reason they ought never to have 
been in it, and that yet it would be a religious calamity for them to be 
out of it ? 

There is no doubt, that when the clerical office should cease to be an 
endowed profession, great numbers would speedily relinquish it, partly 
■from the withdrawment of the former support and emolument, which in 
very many cases the congregations would not feel esteem enough to 
replace by voluntary supplies ; partly from the indifference or positive 
dislike which many of them are known to feel to the religious employ¬ 
ment. And you will ask me what is then to become of the spiritual 
interests of the people ? I may answer by pressing home my question 
—whatever become of them, is it for you to maintain that it would be a 
religious calamity for the essentially defective, for the fatally errone¬ 
ous teachers of Christianity to vacate the pastoral function ? You 
need no description of multitudes of those who have taken it on 
them ; mere men of the world, who have entered the church just as a 
profession, in the most secular sense of the term, as more convenient or 
accessible than any other ; under no solemn commanding sense of the 
importance of religion for their own selves, maintaining only a profes¬ 
sional decorum of character, and too many of them hardly even that, 
content with a cold official performance of “ duty assuring the people 
of final safety on slender and delusive conditions ; many of them little 
addicted to sacred studies ; and some of them, of more intellectual 
habits, exhibiting the result of their application to theological subjects in 
a systematic opposition to the doctrines in assertion of which you are 

constantly citing the holy Scriptures, and the articles of your church_ 

according to which latter standard at any rate you are certainly in the 
right. 


LETTERS. 


173 


But I am told that you resort from the pressure of such untoward 
facts to the evangelical temperament of the prayers^ which are to impart 
the genuine sentiments of religion in default or in spite of the sermons. 
Have they this salutary efficacy ? If you have been much conversant 
in those parts of the country (dark regions, you denominate them) 
where the evangelical doctrines have never been brought through the 
means of preaching, in the church or by the dissenters, I am, from 
various experience, certain you must have found that the Prayer-book 
has failed to reflect one glimmer of those doctrines, as you understand 
them, on the minds of the people. I remember that inveterate devotee 
to the church, Hannah More, acknowledging the fact to be notorious, 
and expressing her wonder at it. Did you ever know even one instance 
of a thoughtless irreligious man, or a mere formalist, being awakened, 
converted (I use your own terms) by means of the bare instrumentality 
of the prayers ? 

If you are appalled at the sight of the wide chasm thus supposed or 
threatened to be made, I am not accountable to answer the question how 
it is to be filled up. The answer may be fairly required from the con¬ 
sistency of those whose theological principles call aloud for this infraction, 
while their ecclesiastical ones are as vociferous for the inviolability of an 
institution which would to be sure instantly go to pieces under such Uii 
operation. 

If however it will be a consolation, you may be assured there never 
will be any such sudden downfall of the church, and simultaneous flight 
or destitution of its ministers. If the dissenters, advancing in the ratio 
of recent times, shall have risen after a number of years to such a pre¬ 
ponderating majority, and the collective nation shall have declined so far 
from its veneration for the establishment, that the representative legisla¬ 
ture, seeing its preservation no longer valuable on political grounds, shall 
doom it to extinction, even then there would be assigned to the actually 
occupying clergy an equitable allowance of support during their lives or 
their necessities. And thus the established ministry will be prolonged, 
whether for better or for worse ; while their continual diminution in the 
course of nature will gradually bring the people universally to take on 
themselves the maintenance of whatever belongs to their religion. 

But you, even you, with all your sorrow that the establishment is 
fatally treacherous to its momentons trust, are still more zealous for its 
permanence, in the professed hope that the church, which should all this 
while have been converting the people, may at length be itself converted. 
Strange idea,'‘methinks ! that the institution appointed as the grand rector 
of tlie people’s judgments on the most important of all subjects, their 
guardian against error and all evil principles, should be waiting to be 
itself rectified by the action of extrinsic causes; that is to say, causes 
which having independently of it, and even under its opposition, accom¬ 
plished a great work which it ought to have effected, shall rectify it in 
addition. The church shall in time become purely, faithfully, efficaciously 


174 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


evangelical. In what time, and by what means ? Obviously, when the 
divers and strongly-combined authorities which exercise the ascendency 
over it shall have first become so. When the heavenly fire shall have 
descended on the high places of the land—when courts, and statesmen, 
and the chief ecclesiastical dignitaries, and universities, and titled 
patrons, and opulent proprietors, and traders in advowsons—when these 
shall become very generally the spiritual, humble disciples of the school 
of Christ, then at length the church will attain its evangelical purity. 
This will, indeed, be coming to its duty rather of the latest. In the com¬ 
paratively smooth service it will then have on its hands (for the people, 
too, cannot have remained far behind in such a change), it may calmly 
rejoice to see already performed, by some extraneous agency, the mighty 
operation for the achievement of which its own powers and privileges had 
been conferred ; and truly munificent must the nation be, to reward it by 
a confirmation of those privileges for what it has not done, and has not 
to do. 

But you may say that, as you are promising yourselves a progressive 
evangelization of these authorities ascendant over the religious character 
of the church, you may fairly calculate on a contemporary and at least 
equal progress in the renovation of the church itself, with a consequent 
efficacy in corresponding proportion. Be it so ; but what will you be 
thinking all the while of the contrary and counteracting effect of the 
spiritually dead condition (your own phrase) of the rm-evangelized por¬ 
tion of the church, which will for a long time, at all events, retain you 
in the hapless condition of the captives of Mezentius ? As to any rapid 
progress in the hoped for change in the disposition of the chief patron¬ 
age, it would seem to me that you have little cause to be so sanguine. 
What, for example, have you to expect from the superior personages in 
the state, even such of them as are supposed to be not altogether 
ignorant or careless of religion ? I remember when some of you looked 
with considerable hope and confidence to that very respectable premier 
and churchman, the late Lord Liverpool. When, however, after a period 
of delay and expectation, a representation was conveyed to him by Mr. 
Wilberforce, complaining that the evangelical clergy were neglected in 
the dispensation of patronage, he replied that it was on principle that 
the patronage was so withheld, for that he considered the evangelical 
party to be doing great mischief in the community. 

That you do, notwitlistanding all the adverse influences, obtain here 
and there the introduction of an evangelical minister, in succession to 
one who was perhaps violently in opposition, may well be very gratify¬ 
ing to you. And indeed this gratification has often so strong an expres¬ 
sion, as to afford a significant indication of your own estimate of the 
state of the church. For it seems to be regarded almost as a God-send, 
that, under such auspices, there should have come unto, or come forth 
in, the church, yet one more such minister as you say all the thousands 
of them ought to be. 


LETTERS. 


175 


On such a survey of the ecclesiastical system, I hope you will pardon 
an old observer for presuming to dissuade you of the evangelical party 
from joining chorus in the language which profanely affects to identify 
the fate of Christianity with the stability or fall of an institution which, 
by your own declaration, unites the Manicheean principles—but without 
their equality. 

Mr. Editor, I am more ashamed than I can express, to have encroach¬ 
ed on your page to so .unconscionable a length ; and faithfully promise 
never to obtrude the subject on you again. 

Your’s, &-C., 

A Quiet Looker-on.* 


CLXXXV. TO THE REV. THOMAS COLES. 

Stapleton, Dec. 22, 1834. 

.... From time to time we have heard, with sincere sympathy, of 
the increasing debility and sufferings of her who now suffers no more. 
It was painful but to think of what was endured by the victim of the 
long progress and continual aggravation of such a disease, which the 
affectionate and deeply interested attendants feel themselves unable to 
arrest or materially to alleviate. In such a case, it is distressing for 
them to feel that the doomed object must suffer, must inevitably hear it 
all, whatever be their willingness, if that were possible, to lighten the 
pressure by bearing themselves a share of it. How distinct and separate, 
how solitary in this sense is the individual who might say, “ I am very 
grateful for all your sympathy and assiduous kind offices, but still it is I 
alone that am to feel my strength diminishing, to struggle with suffocation, 
and to go through the aggravating malady to the last conflict.” Never¬ 
theless it is a consolation to the survivors, when an amiable sufferer, like 
your daughter, has had all the alleviations which can be gn^en by vigilant 
affection, combined with domestic accommodation and medical aid, so 

* “ Who told you of ‘ my two letters ?’—meaning, I suppose, in the 
Morning Chronicle. Whoever wrote them, I approve them enough to be 
pleased that you also approve them. The writer would, I dare say, be cu¬ 
rious to see by what wriggles the ‘ evangelicals ’ would get out of the 
corner—out of the cleft-stick. But how strange, that instead of such 
wriggling, hardly a man of them of any account has the honesty to come 
manfully out of the corrupt institution. With one or two exceptions,, 
all who have of late years come out have left anything they were ever 
worth behind them.”—Jlr. Foster to the Rev. Josiah Hill, JVov. 1, 
1834. 

“ Some one naming himself ‘ Philalethes,^ has written in the Morning 
Chronicle against the thing, and threatens another column or two. I have 
no disposition to say anything to him. He is one of those who have no 
notion of the business as a matter of religion—religion by and for itself; 
and he makes, as coolly as possible, some monstrous false assumptions of 
fact, in favor of the [Established Church],—assumptions which prove that 
there is no talking to him to any purpose.”— Mr. Foster to B. Stokes, Esq., 
Oct. 28, 3834. 



176 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


different from the melancholy condition of many, who languish into death 
in poverty and every kind of destitution. 

It would also have been consolatory, no doubt, to have received some 
more distinct expression of a cheering view into the future scene, in the 
near approach to the entrance into it. But I trust that no gloomy senti¬ 
ment will, on this account, rest on your mind. The divine mercy may 
well be confided in, much beyond the extent of the specific decided in¬ 
dications displayed by those who are the objects of it. I would not doubt, 
that in the silent thoughts and emotions of your child that mercy was 
desired, and that it has been found. The reluctance to leave this life is 
in a young person, to whom it has been pleasing in possession and flat¬ 
tering in prospect, very compatible with a state of mind which is safe for 
leaving it. A high satisfaction, or animated pleasure, in the prospect 
of death, is‘probably granted but to very greatly the minority of such 
young persons, who yet leave us no ground for distrust that to them it is 
a happy change. 


CLXXXVI. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

Stapleton, Feb. 16, 1835. 

My dear old Friend,— I need not say again, that I am always inte¬ 
rested by what you tell me of yourself and domestic associates, and of 
the neighborhood; partly because, as to the latter I am a. stranger, and as 
to the former (yourself and Mrs. F.), I do not feel myself a stranger. 
You two have remained in my memory and regard as the same, while, as to 
the neighborhood, the inhabitants that I knew are almost all swept away ; 
and, I am told, that almost the very face of the country is changed. Some 
descriptions to this effect were given me by Mr. Jackson, whom I saw at 
Bath a few days since. He told me how Hebden-Bridge is grown into 
a town; how cealain gloomy and romantic glens, the scenes of my soli¬ 
tary wanderings, some forty or more years since, are cleared of their 
forest-shades, opened into thoroughfares, and occupied with cotton-mills 
—and he added—meeting-houses. How strangely would the sight of 
tliis break up my ancient associations! and with a feeling of the un- 
complacent kind ; though, as to one of the intrusive novelties—meeting¬ 
houses—I certainly ought to regard them as a good exchange for the 
ancient resorts of owls and foxes. By the help of Mr. J. I endea^'ored 
at a combination of the modern with the ancient geography. But, in¬ 
deed, in simply recovering the ancient there were difficulties, such as 
D’Anville had probably to encounter in his verifications of places in the 
ancient world. In some instances I remembered places of which I had 
lost the names. In others there were names remaining in my memory 

disconnected from the places.I am never so unpatriotic as to 

depreciate my native locality. I have always and everywhere constantly 
asserted, that I have seen very few places more remarkable, in the quality 
denominated picturesque, than that district. Its bold and varied features 




LETTERS. 


177 


will remain in my imagination as long as I live. And they have not been 
the less cherished there for that wild and moor-land gloom, which, on 
some sides, invades and bounds them. The circumstance has always 
been congenial with my habits of feeling. A gloomy and solitary ten¬ 
dency belonged, I suppose, to my nativity. 

If I were with you, it would be very interesting to go into a long and 
patient comparison of our parallel series of feelings, impressions, no¬ 
tions, habits: though I confess it would be a very imperfect and faded 
recollection that I could make of my own. You and our friend Mr. 
Greaves, are the only coevals from youth, with whom this social and 
comparative retrospect could have a strong and sympathetic interest. 
Hughes was the one other individual. And with him the social com¬ 
parison would, in a great degree, have been under the same predicament 
in one respect—that the intimate personal association was much the 
greatest in the early part of life. For more than thirty years past I have 
but very rarely and briefly seen him—slight snatches of time, when his 
Bible Society traverses brought him in my way, at intervals of one, two, 
or even three years; and communications by letter were hardly more 
frequent. I am gratified by what you allow me to believe of your own 
and my old friend Mrs. Fawcett’s health. Do you both fairly and fully 
take to it that you are old people ? I can now and then, in particular 
circumstances, detect myself in a certain sort of reluctance to recognize 
that fact as to myself. I dare not assert, that the most musical notes 
that I could hear would be—“ Old Foster,”—a designation which, though 
I may not happen to hear it, I dare say slides into the colloquial speech 
of those who have a reference to me, notwithstanding there being no 
younger male branch of my family to make such epithet necessary for 
distinction. But any feeling 1 ever have of this kind brings with it, 
sensibly and invariably, a sentiment of self-reproach, in the admonition 
that a conscious, full, decided, satisfactory preparation for another life 
and a higher state of existence, would associate a pleasing sentiment 
with everything that would remind me how near, comparatively at all 
events, I am approaching to the momentous and mysterious translation. 
And I do earnestly implore the heavenly grace, which alone can render 
that preparation decided and satisfactory. The retrospect of my long 
life is deeply humiliating, whether judged of absolutely, or by comparison 
with individuals, who have gone from indefatigable Christian service to 
their glorious reward. In this view it is not without a profoundly mor¬ 
tifying emotion, that I can repeat the name of Dr. Carey, unquestionably 
the very foremost name of our times in the whole Christian loorld. What 
an entrance his has been into that other world!. 


VOL. II. 


13 



17S 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CLXXXVII. TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE. 

[ I'he Ballot—No. I.] 

April 24, JS35. 

Sir, —In reporting from day to day the progress of the late election, 
your columns abounded with descriptions and indignant complaints, from 
all quarters, of the iniquitous management on the part of the anti-popu- 
lar interest, perverting the suffrage by every expedient of corruption and 
intimidation ; so that your correspondents had to inform you from a hun¬ 
dred places, that it was absolutely impossible to obtain an honest election. 
One of them from a large city, told you—“ The Reform Bill is not worth 
five farthings here, so inveterate, despotic an ascendency has the tory 
corporation, combined with the high-church, acquired over the interests 
and fears of the inhabitants.” You have subsequently, when recounting 
the causes of the reduction of the reformers in the new parliament, as 
compared with the preceding, adverted to this wide and flagrant system 
of iniquity; and affirmed, I believe with truth, that the same bad prac¬ 
tices were chargeable in but a small proportion on the reform candidates 
and their supporters. But I expected you to do something more than 
this. I reckoned on your taking an occasion to declare, in explicit and 
emphatic terms, that to whatever extent the nefarious system has been 
successful in sending members to parliament, to that extent the repre¬ 
sentation has been falsified, the nation defrauded, and the legislature vi¬ 
tiated. In that proportion the House of Commons is the reverse of what 
it ostensibly purports to be, and what it ought to bo—a real representa¬ 
tion of the people. And the corrupt section is not only morally invalid, 
but criminal: the members who have entered by this dishonorable road, 
not only have no right to the position they have assumed, but deserve 
(or their agents deserve) some penal visitation for the proceeding to 
which they owe their success. Yet, somehow it happens, that when 
once they have got within the door, and are sworn and seated, they seem 
to have slipped off the badge of disgrace which clung to them up to the 
moment before their entrance; they have signed with the holy water at 
stepping in, and are become all at once honorable men.” Their right 
to be there seems to be admitted upon the fact itself that they are there. 
They maintain the same assurance of front, of speech-making, and of 
voting, as if they were land Jide representatives ; just as you have some¬ 
times known a man, who has by fraudulent means obtained possession of 
a property not his own, carry himself nevertheless with the confident air 
of an honest man. The party, and the leaders of the party, to which 
these members addict themselves, know very well how their allies were 
obtained. But what of that ? Their votes tell for as much as if the 
most genuine suffrages of the constituency had sent them to the house; 
and a minister who is willing to rule by such means (Sir R. Peel for ex¬ 
ample), would only laugh at you for telling him he has no moral right to 
that part of his support; that in so far the approbation givea him is a 


LETTERS. 


179 


lie against the community, and that he is availing himself of a flagrant 
iniquity. It would be deemed a violation of all propriety for a bold, in¬ 
dependent member, facing the ranks where these worthies are in array, 
to declare aloud, before or after a division, that several dozens or scores 
of those honorable gentlemen ought to be struck out of the vote, or even 
out of the house, on account of the criminal means by which they had 
entered it—so much does success always extenuate the opprobrium of 
any turpitude in the manner of obtaining it. 

And now, sir, consider what a prodigious, and possibly disastrous ef¬ 
fect, such a falsified representation of the country may have on its affairs. 
Questions of an incalculable importance—we might suppose a question 
of peace or war, or a competition between opposite systems of policy— 
might be decided, and decided perniciously to the country, by the prepon¬ 
derance given by the votes of those whom nothing but the infamous 
practices at elections had qualified to vote at all. Or great questions of 
national interest, which a genuine representation of the people would 
have decided speedily and conclusive!}^, may be retained or forced back 
into such a balance of power as to threaten a long continuance of com¬ 
motion, alternation, and c-onfused or frustrated legislation. 

Recollecting the vile means to which the reports in your Journal, dur¬ 
ing the late election, ascribed in so many instances the success of the 
anti-reform candidates, I am sure it is your opinion, even after the utmost 
allowance by way of set-ofF should be made for all offences of the same 
kind committed on the reforming side, that an honest election would have 
carried into the house such an overpowering majority of reformers as 
would have sent the tory ministry once for all to their proper places, in¬ 
stead of that bare and fluctuating majority wliich they can brave from 
the strong fortification of office ; or with which, even if they were dis¬ 
lodged, they can maintain powerful, long, and baffling fight, backed by 
an augmented force and pertinacity in the quarters hitherto obstinate 
against reform. But now, sir, does it remain yet a question at this time 
of day, what is the true theory of popular representation, according to 
any doctrine of our so lauded constitution, and according to the intention 
of the Reform Bill ? Am I allowed to assume it as the theory and inten¬ 
tion, that the national constituency shall freely and honestly vote accord¬ 
ing to their judgment of measures and men; that, instructed, reasoned 
with, pleaded with, as much as you please, they shall yet be determined 
in their choice by nothing but their deliberate approbation; and that every¬ 
thing to the contrary of this is, so far, treason against the national polity ? 
If so, this most important function ought be guarded with every possible 
security for its faithful exercise. And I need not ask you whether the 
present condition of the exercise of w’hat is pretended to be conferred as 
a right and a privilege, imposing a most serious duty, be not a flagrant 
mockery. With the venal it is a privileged occasion of having their 
country to sell; with the dependent, it is a badge of slavery; with those 
who are conscientious as w^ell as dependent, it is a painful trial of prin- 


180 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ciple; all which abuses reached their last excess in the recent election, 
and are now to have their result in the legi^slature. If this vast and 
multifarious mass of evil be inseparable from the representative system, 
it is time to lower the tone of our boasting about our liberal institutions 
—our government by enlightened opinion—the independent spirit of 
Englishmen, and all that. Especially we should get sober from our ine¬ 
briated exultation over our parliamentary reform. 

How little did you, or any of us, anticipate in our triumph at having 
accomplished, by the reform bill, a final overthrow, as we fancied, of the 
party who had so long reigned and profited by corruption, that within^ 
two years we should have the rank, unmixed essence of that party, as 
embodied in the fiercest opponents of reform, again in command of the 
state, and supported by one-half, within a trifle, of the so-called House 
of Commons; a proportion so close upon an equality of numbers, that if 
the tories had been willing to disburse a very small addition of money to 
the million they are computed to have expended, or had given a few 
ounces harder pressure to the compulsion on the unprotected voters, 
they would have had the formal advantage of a majority in the House. 
You deny, with small exception, that this is from any re-action in the 
opinions of the national constituency. Then, what a wretched system 
—what an utterly fallacious mode of requiring a declaration of the public 
sentiment, you must acknowledge the present thing called election to be ; 
and most formidable must be the evils involved in a remedial expedient 
that would substantially avail for a true expression of that sentiment, if 
they would be anything near as great as having the expression of it so 
widely and deeply falsified. You will surmise that the expedient I have 
in view is no other than the Ballot. And what other has any man sug¬ 
gested, with even an appearance of plausibility ? Those who are not 
against it unconditionally and at all events, are saying, Let us first try 
everything else. What is it that they have to try? Laws against 
bribery have notoriously been a dead letter. If an instance or two of 
conviction occur (as recently at Cambridge), it takes us by surprise, as 
a thing we could not have reckoned on. In cases where everybody 
knew that bribery had pervaded every street of a town, with a pollution 
as gross as the stream in its kennels, it has been found impossible to 
produce that sort of precise and technical proof demanded by legal men, 
and by members of parliamentary committees, some of them, perchance, 
having reasons of their own for being punctilious in the admission of 
evidence. And what mode of jurisdiction can you contrive to take 
cognizance of intimidation, practised by landlords, employers, wealthy 
customers, clergymen, parish officers, the heads of public offices, and 
corporation magnates—intimidation often conveyed through hints and 
inuendoes, perfectly intelligible to those who dare not misunderstand 
them, but so slightly expressed that they would seem to vanish into no¬ 
thing when attempted to be made the foundation of a criminal charge ? 
Let us wait in the hope (something to this effect was lately said by Lord 


LETTERS. 


181 


John Russell) of the growth of a more honorable and virtuous feeling, 
by which influential men will become ashamed of such base practices. 
But how are you to send them back to pass through a new school of 
morals ? And tell me, if you can, of any incipient symptom of such a 
change. Which of them is at all ashamed of the recent exploits in this 
line ? Is any one of them the worse received in the rank of society to 
which he belongs ? Are not their performances, if they had been suc¬ 
cessful, a subject of complacent and jocular reference in their select 
coteries. It is there a good joke how they drove their cattle to—the 
hustings, while some of the radical creatures were internally grumbling, 
or even giving vent to their chagrin in impotent mutterings. And who 
is to teach and exhort them to turn from their bad courses ? Will not 
many of their spiritual instructors (if accounts be true) have cause to be 
very lenient in their reprehensions ? Even Lord John Russell himself 
was evidently very sceptical as to any such progress to honor and 
honesty; and, pressed by the evidence that, instead of an abatement, 
there is an aggravation of the evil, acknowledged that we may at last be 
driven to the ballot. As no other expedient in a tangible form is pro¬ 
posed from any quarter, we are left to the alternative of resorting to this, 
or of surrendering the grand palladium, as it has been called, of our 
popular rights and liberties to a malignant agency, which essentially 
vitiates, and will not cease to vitiate, our legislature and legislation. 
Yes, this is the alternative, we are brought to the plain question whether 
we be, as the constitutional doctrine pretends, or be not, to have an ac¬ 
tual faithful representation ? If this be not an idle theoretical fancy, but 
a practical thing, to which we have a right that ought to be maintained, 
we must maintain it by the means by which alone we can maintain it. 
As being our sole resource, the expedient is necessarily the right one, 
whatever evils of its own it may involve. You deny the right itself, if 
you deny the right of using the only effectual means for our possession 
of it. You treat us with the ludicrous and spiteful absurdity of first appoint¬ 
ing an institution for the public welfare—essential, all-important, you 
proclaim, for good government—and then telling us that, nevertheless, 
the only means for making it effectual are worse than leaving it to be 
frustrated. It is a capitally contrived machine, only it cannot be worked 
so as to effect its purpose without the application of an implement that 
will make it scatter mischief all around it. But better send it to the 
lumber-room at once, if it cannot effect the good it is intended for with¬ 
out a balance, or over-balance, of damage from the only mode of working 
by which it can effect that good. Why continue working it in a manner 
which, while it causes much greater damage another way, does not but 
very partially effect the intended good ? We do not deny that evils 
of very considerable amount would attend the ballot, especially in the 
earlier stages of the practice, but if we account them such that we must 
reject it though we have no other way of obtaining an approximation to 
tlie faithful action of the representative principle, we plainly say that we 


182 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


forego that pretended essential requisite to good government, and submit 
to be misrepresented, to a great and pernicious extent, in the legislature. 
And so we must sit down in helpless resignation, till the stars shall be 
more auspicious ; till unprincipled wealth and arrogance shall spontane¬ 
ously cease to bribe and threaten; or our universal constituency shall 
rise to such a pitch of virtue and courage as to reject the offered pur- 
chase-money, and defy at every hazard the menaced revenge. A goodly 
prospect, and a short interval for the exercise of our patience under a 
perverted legislation !—a legislation which may, meanwhile, create for 
posterity also abundant occasion for the exercise of their patience, in 
addition to that load of debt which preceding parliaments, convened under 
a mere sham of representation, have entailed on us and them. 

I am, &c. 

An Independent Elector. 


CLXXXVIII. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRONICLE. 

[The Ballot. No. II.J 

^pril 25, 1835. 

In adverting to the evils incident to the ballot, and in a degree insepa¬ 
rable from it till it should have worked into decided practice and power, 
I must lay the chief stress on those of a moral nature. The anti-re¬ 
formers lecture on these in a strain of conscientious horror; but they 
may be suspected to have far other, and in their view stronger, objections 
to secret voting. With them the greatest evil is the very thing which 
we are anxious to obtain as the greatest good—the conveyance into par¬ 
liament of the genuine national opinion and will. In opposing the 
motion for the ballot, so ably and eloquently brought forward by Mr. 
Grote in 1833, Sir Robert Peel honestly avowed his grand objection to 
be, that the ballot “ would give a much more democratic House of Com¬ 
mons, which he thought quite needless a declaration that the electors, 
in the present manner of voting, are far from the free exercise of their 
pretended privilege ; that the ballot would be a remedy for that wrong ; 
and that, as far as depended on^him, that wrong should be perpetuated. 
In this declaration he stood forth a genuine representative in one capacity, 
whatever he were in another; he expressed the mind of the anti-re¬ 
formers ; for they to a man have voted, and will again vote, against the 
ballot, on the very same principle. He, therefore, is but an equivocal 
reformer, who declaims against the detestable system by which they 
vitiate the popular suffrage and representation; and, at the same time, 
joins them in denouncing the expedient by which he has their own con¬ 
fession that the system would be substantially abolished. 

The moral evils correctly alleged against the ballot, fall chiefly within 
a comprehensive sense of the term falsehood. To importunate or impe¬ 
rative candidates, or canvassers, would be given many promises not 
intended to be performed; under protection of secresy they would be 



LETTERS. 


183 


violated; on subsequent inquisition or accusation there would be unscru¬ 
pulous affirmations that they had been kept: there would be maintained 
before, and during, and after, the season of election, a system of distrust, 
concealment, duplicity, equivocation, injurious to the moral principle and 
habit, and repressive of the frank intercourse of society. The arraign¬ 
ment is eagerly exaggerated; but it is true to the extent of forming a 
serious charge ; and it is easily made to appear fatal against the ballot, 
in an argument that takes no further account of moral considerations 
than barely and exclusively as implicated with that practice. In listen¬ 
ing to debates on the subject, it has struck me as very curious, that op- 
posers of this mode of election on moral grounds, reason and declaim as 
if they had to deal with an insulated topic, altogether independent of 
relative and comparative considerations. Prove the ballot to be liable to 
these grave objections and we must look no further—there is an end of 
the matter; as if an election were one of those affairs which, if a cer¬ 
tain proposed mode of transacting them bo exceptionable, need not and 
will not be transacted at all; or as if, when it is a thing that must and 
will take place, a knowledge of the manner in which it will be transact¬ 
ed, if the one proposed be rejected, had nothing to do with the question 
whether it ought to be rejected. They really talk as if no such thing 
were known as a necessity of choosing between two evils, with an obli¬ 
gation to put them in the balance, and choose the less. They say, in 
effect, that we look at one side, taken separately; and if there be much 
belonging to it that we cannot approve, we are to determine for the other 
at all hazards, whatever may be the evils involved in it. 

Let the ballot, on the one side, stand obnoxious to the serious excep¬ 
tions which I have enumerated, and then let us see what we have on the 
other. There is a direct violation of both justice and law, in applying 
the resources of w’ealth and power to pervert the national suffrage, and 
so to frustrate the whole end of the institution. A general venality is 
indefatigably promoted, and promoted by the classes who are under spe¬ 
cial obligations to be the patrons of virtue, but whom the persons tempted 
and corrupted by them are gratified thus to find no better than them¬ 
selves ; and who thus forfeit all moral influence of station over those 
below them, by whom it is shrewdly presumed, that those who will pur¬ 
chase others will, if they find a good market, sell themselves. Hundreds 
of thousands are suborned by what they know it to be wrong for them to 
take, and for their superiors to give. All sentiments of public virtue 
are rooted out, and a great public interest sunk into the traffic of the 
basest selfishness. The corruption powerfully operates to sap all moral 
principle in their minds ; especially under the aggravating circumstance, 
that this bribery, vicious in itself, often leads to a direct plunge into other 
vices, the revels of intemperance and every disorder. It leads also tc 
the falsehood and prevarication which are alleged against the ballot, as 
if that alone could be the guilty cause of such vices. For, will not tfie 
receivers of bribes conceal and deny, in any society but that of kindred 


184 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


baseness, that they have sold their votes; at least such of them as have 
some decency of character to maintain among their neighbors ? espe¬ 
cially when close upon the dubious termination of a hard-run contest, 
prices have risen very high, will the receiver of the value of a horse, or 
two or three cows, be disposed to tell how he came by the money ? Will 
he not, if challenged, invent a story of any other source rather than own 
the true one ? I dare say the decently reputed elector who lately, in one 
of our boroughs, near the last critical moment, was strongly suspected 
of receiving more than 2001. for his vote, given contrary to liis positive 
promise, which was claimed by the opposite candidate, will have taken 
especial care, and expended a good per-centage of lies on his pounds, to 
avoid the proof. 

There is the cheaper, the prouder, the still more effective iniquity, ol 
compulsion by intimidation. Of tliis part of the subject it is impossible 
to make a more condensed, or vigorous, or revolting exhibition, than that 
in Mr. Grote’s eloquent printed speech, which every member, who ex¬ 
pects to vote on the next motion for the ballot, would do well to read 
and ponder. During the warfare, which ended in carrying the Reform 
Bill, many of the aristocracy, while vexed at losing the rotten boroughs, 
might possibly have had some presentiment, never suspected by our sim¬ 
plicity, of a partial and very considerable compensation, in a way which, 
though less suited to their convenience, would be more gratifying to their 
pride. They, perhaps, calculated that the enlarged constituency, instead 
of creating an independent power to defy them, would but supply them, 
in many instances, with so many more subjects to command; at the 
same time that it would abate the former opprobrium of monopoly, by a 
plausible appearance of a much more popular election than when they, 
or their nominees, were sent up by two or three dozen of what were 
called voters. And the recent election has shown that this, if they made 
it, was no miscalculation. 

But look at the odious spectacle, think of the national infamy, of per¬ 
haps more than a quarter of a million of men, invested with what they 
are told to consider as an honorable privilege, admonished that it lays on 
them a most serious duty, appointed and recognized as the exponents of 
the opinion and will of the vast community, summoned and appealed to 
for the expression of its mind, arrayed as in a mighty guardianship of 
its interests—think of so immense a portion of the men standing in this 
capacity and under this responsibility, being placed in the alternative of 
either violating the obligation, and doing a wrong to their country, or 
incurring such immediate, direct, private injury, as will infallibly be felt 
as too much to suffer for a public duty. Think of the arrogance that 
plainly and insolently threatens, or the signified will of the power which 
needs but to hint, the frustration of a man’s industry, the loss of his busi¬ 
ness and subsistence, the turning out of his situation, the expulsion from 
his house or his farm ; or, in the humble grade, the deprivation of aid 
from philanthropic institutions, unless he will do what the tyrannic au- 


LETTERS. 


185 


/■hority is committing a villainous wrong in exacting, on the pain of such 
a consequence. Imagine the suppressed, or confidentially uttered resent¬ 
ments, “the curses, not loud, but'deep,” among one portion of the bond- 
men ; and the conscious self-degradation, mingled with the indignant 
feelings against the oppressor, in the virtuous portion ; many a one of 
whom has, for a while, maintained a resolution to do his duty at what¬ 
ever cost, but has looked once more at his family—and yielded. For let 
it be especially remembered, that the severity of the wrong is aggravated 
just in proportion to the good principle, the conscientiousness of those 
on whom it is inflicted. And it gives a strange idea of a privilege, that 
it should be a grievance in proportion as the possessor would make con¬ 
science of his manner of using it. An excellent notion, too, of an insti¬ 
tution expressly designed for the defence of popular liberty, that it should 
be skilfully adapted to be seized upon for the benefit of aristocratic 
tyranny ; at the same time a fine encouragement to public and all other 
virtue, that while the honest man finds himself exposed to punishment 
for maintaining his integrity, he should see that certain of his neighbors 
are rewarded for not troubling themselves with any such incumbrance. 

The result of all this is, what I liave so much insisted on before, that 
the popular branch of the legislature is not a genuine representation of tlie 
people : and either the insulting theoretic figment that it is so, should 
be honestly flung away, or a mode of election should be adopted that 
will approach to a realization of that professed intention. 

Now, sir, you have to place this aggravated and complicated mass of 
evil on the one side, and over against it whatever vicious properties or 
accidents are attributable to the ballot. And in default of any effectual 
middle expedient, what have you to do ? It would be no better than a 
travesty of morality for you to say, “ There needs no deliberation ; there 
are bad things inseparable from the ballot; I shall give my sanction to 
them by adopting it; but I must on no terms sanction what is bad; I 
must, therefore, reject it absolutely, be the consequence what it may”— 
when the consequence may be, that you choose what involves a much 
greater proportion of evil; which, therefore, you sanction, under this 
very affectation of scrupulous moral principle. At the least, you deci¬ 
dedly give your sanction to all that proportion of immorality by which 
the part you choose exceeds that which you reject. 

And now, as to the comparative proportions. I confess I am at a loss to 
understand, how an unprejudiced, well-principled observer can look at all 
the abominations of the present mode of election—the school for the dis¬ 
cipline of venality, periodically opened all over the land, in the form of a 
market, for the sale of men’s frail integrity, under a knavish management 
of all manner of deceit and subterfuge, and amidst the temptations to 
coarser vice—another sort of contemporary agency, violating law, and 
right, and all the worthier feelings of humanity; crushing the independ¬ 
ence of inferiors; turning their nominal privilege into a practical con¬ 
viction that they are slaves ; compelling them, on pain of great, and 


186 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


even ruinous injuiy, to sacrifice the judgment and conscience which it 
has been inculcated upon them to exercise and obey ; forcing them to 
give, in practice, the lie to their opinion ; perpetuating all practicable 
revenge against such resolutely conscientious, but dependent men, as 
do their duty in despite of menaces, which they know will be executed 
—and the upshot of all this in a spurious legislature : I say, I cannot 
understand how any upright, plain-judging man, can think this vast 
compost of iniquity, a less amount of evil than the temporary concealment 
or dissimulation, the breaking of extorted promises, and the prevarica¬ 
tion to be resorted to for eluding tyranny and revenge, which are the 
delinquencies alleged, and partly with truth, to be incident to the ballot. 

Far be it from me to make a light account of these delinquencies, by 
which integrity is so seriously damaged. I may allow that they are 
great evils with perfect safety to the argument that they are rather to be 
incurred than the greater ones on the other side. But still, there is un¬ 
questionably to be admitted a very material qualification of the moral 
estimate of them, from the consideration that they are modes of dis¬ 
honesty })ractised for the very purpose, as the accusation itself acknow¬ 
ledges, of maintaining honesty in the discharge of the electoral duty, 
consistently with impunity in so performing it. The persons resorting 
to these expedients arc in the situation of a man wdio is about going 
with money to pay his debts, and is beset by a villainous extortioner, or 
a robber on the highway ; and the sternest moralist would not refuse to 
acknowledge a great palliation of the turpitude of an insincere promise 
or a false declaration, made to elude these personages in order that his 
money might go to its right use. And if one of these exactors should 
afterwards chance to discover that he had thus been d/fraiided, what 
W'ould you think of his exclaiming, with a virtuous indignation, against 
the falsehood, the immorality, of the man who had by such means dis¬ 
appointed his wicked attempt ? And what sliould I think of you, if you 
joined him in this righteous indignation,—saying, that though, to be 
sure, it was not quite the thing that he should have made the attempt 
on the man’s property, yet it was extremely criminal in the man to pro¬ 
tect himself against the plunderer by such means ? 

But I cannot help noticing here what a strange leaning to the side of 
power (one of the worst and most general of our ill propensities), I 
have observed in the reasoning of the opposers of the ballot, on the moral 
ground that it would fiicilitate and protect the breach of promises. They 
constantly give the benefit of their casuistry to the oppressor’s side. If 
the dependent voter, shrinking at threatened injury, shall have given a 
promise contrary to his judgment and conscience, his obligation, accord¬ 
ing to these moralists, is from that moment perfectly simple and un¬ 
equivocal. No matter that his fears have brought him into a dilemma 
between, on the one side the obligation of his promise, and on the other 
the prior inalienable duty which he owes at once to his country and to 
himself, for the faithful exercise of his electoral function. His obligation 


LETTERS. 


187 


is all on the left hand; he is solemnly bound, in allegiance to the 
tyrant, to fullil a promise yielded under the hard stress of self-preserva¬ 
tion, and to give his paramount obligation to the winds. Else he is lec¬ 
tured with the most imposing gravity on the crime of violating promises ; 
while his oppressor incurs only the tolerant censure of having some- 
wliat overstrained one of the advantages of his higher situation. And 
lest he should be deprived, through secret voting, of the benefit of such 
lightly censurable injustice, the dependent voter shall be left absolutely 
at his mercy. So sure are we, moralists and all, to find the least to 
blame on the stronger side ! 

“ But why will the electors let themselves be coerced ?” In the man¬ 
ful oratory of those \vho can talk at their ease we hear it said—let the 
electors show themselves worthy of the privilege conferred on them ; let 
them with one consent vindicate their right with a noble resolution, 
and then, &c., &c. Why, yes ; then, the supposed consequences would 
follow. But if the discussion, instead of a vain speculation on what 
would take place if things were—as they are not, be an inquiry for 
something that should avail for the desired object in the actual state ot 
things, it is answer enough to this brave suggestion to say, that no 
such thing can bo; that it is idle to talk of men who are dependent 
in numberless ways, setting up a general defiance of the dictates and 
menaces of a most powerful aristocracy, determined, as there is no want 
of examples to warn those who wish they could dare to be refractory, 
that such a crime will certainly not go unpunished. But I must observe 
in addition, that it is wrong for men to be placed in a condition to require 
heroic virtue for the honest performance of a common duty of citizen¬ 
ship. That must be a badly adjusted institution which practically tells 
a man, that his integrity in such a thing as voting for a member of par¬ 
liament, in a state, too, which is boasting of its political freedom, shall 
be at much of the same cost as fidelity to his religion might have been 
i in times of intolerance and persecution. I am, &c., 
i An Independent Elector. 


CLXXXIX. TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE. 

[The Ballot.—No. III.] 

April 27, 1835. 

Sir,— The epithet “ un-English ” has not yet quite dropped out of the 
phraseology of the opposers of the ballot. It is foolish cant. What! 
it is foreign to tlie English character, is it, for a man who is industri¬ 
ously and anxiously prosecuting some humble occupation, or for a mid¬ 
dle tradesman, to be dismayed at the threat of well-armed power to blast 
his success, destroy his resources, do all that such power can do to re¬ 
duce him to penury or bankruptcy ? It is “ un-English,” is it, for a man 
in some subordinate office to be reluctant to resign his salary, his only 
support, knowing how indifferent a chance the eager competition for 





188 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


situations allows him for obtaining another; or for a small farmer tc 
shrink at the prospect of being ordered off from the dwelling and acres 
where he is tolerably supporting his family, and has perhaps been at the 
expense of improvements in the convenience and cultivation ? 

Some of the opposers are asserting that, notwithstanding all the pro¬ 
tection that the ballot might seem to afford, the efforts at coercion would 
still be continued, by hinted threats, inquisitorial harassings, and revenge 
at hazard on suspected and presumed disobedience. Suppose this ad¬ 
mitted to be true, the argument will then be, that since the odious 
tyranny will do all it can to harass the dependent electors, in spite of 
their protection, we are to leave them exposed to its whole unmitigated 
power, by refusing them even a partial defence; since they would be 
liable to be tracked and annoyed amidst their coverts, give their enemy 
the advantage of fairly running them down in the open field. 

But after all, and whatever might for a while be attempted or inflicted 
by unprincipled power, nobody doubts that substantially it would be de¬ 
feated. There would be a strong determination on the part of the here¬ 
tofore enslaved citizens, to verify their new privilege. And the arrogant 
and imperative classes, finding that the elections did and would, through 
the combined resolution and evasion of the electors, render their threat- 
enings impotent, and the extorted promises worthless, would abandon in 
despair a mode of interference which obtained them no success adequate 
as a compensation for the odium ; an odium which would be aggravated 
by any attempted perseverance of injustice, following up the former vio¬ 
lation of the freedom of the electors with a determination to break 
through the specific provision given them for security against it. 

Bribery, however, 1 have heard it asserted, would still be largely prac¬ 
tised. If so, men must set a lower value on their money in this sort of 
traffic than in any other. In what other bargain will they part with it 
under an uncertainty whether they shall obtain any of the stipulated 
equivalent, and a certainty that in many instances they will be defrauded, 
and without remedy ? The case is, too, that it would be the mutual con¬ 
sciousness of rogue dealing with rogue ; the receiver of the bribe scorn¬ 
ing to admit any sense of obligation to be honest to the payer. He 
will receive it with the ill-suppressed look which would say. You are a 
rascal, you are making me one, but yours shall be the forfeit. The self¬ 
taxing corruptor must have a strong fancy for adding the decoration of 
folly to his baseness, since he would know that the bribe taken from 
him will be an excellent sedative to the principle, and hint to the cupidity, 
of the elector, for making a similar profit of the dishonor of the opposite 
candidate; after which he will go and vote just as he pleases ; perhaps 
cajoling any remainder left him of conscience with the consideration, 
that he has at any rate performed one of his promises. 

As to an objection that has been made against the ballot as giving an 
“ irresponsible power ” to the voters, I believe nobody really'feels it of 
the smallest force. It is not worth while to go into any question of ab- 


/ 


LETTERS. * 189 

Btract principle. Look at the practical state of the case. The allega¬ 
tion has been explained to refer chiefly to a responsibility in which the 
electors stand, or ought to stand, to the large body of the population 
below them ; and means, if it have any deflnable meaning, that they 
would be taken, by the privilege of secret voting, out of the proper sym¬ 
pathy with that inferior portion of the community, and might be indifferent 
or unjust to its interests in their choice of representatives. Now, under 
this pretended solicitude about justice to the opinion, will, and interests 
of the lower order of the people, what is the real ground on which every 
high aristocrat, every tory, in parliament will vote against the ballot ? 
Commend me again, for that, to Sir Robert Peel’s honest avowal, ex¬ 
pressive of the sentiment of all the class, that the grand objection 
against the ballot is, that “ it would give a much more democratic House 
of Commons that is^ a house more, and far too much, partaking of the 
feelings, and partial to the interests of the common people. And it re¬ 
quires a patience more than philosophic to hear this pretended concern 
for preventing the escape of the voters from their responsibility of jus¬ 
tice and good-will to the lower orders, when the whole pleading goes 
plainly to subject them under a slavish and pernicious responsibility to 
the upper classes. Lest they should be disposed or tempted to fail in 
their duty of being guardians of the rights, and considerate to the wishes, 
of the unprivileged multitude, they shall stand in full exposure to be 
bribed or overawed to confirm, by their votes, that imperious oligarchic 
domination which they hold the elective franchise under a responsibility 
to those below them for resisting in their defence. But if I have mis¬ 
taken the quarter to which the argument points, and if the meaning be, 
after all, that the power of the electors should not be “ irresponsible ” to 
those above them, I have only to observe, that a power which you hold, 
subject to an arbitrary power above you, that can dictate how you shall 
use it, is very much like no power at all. You would not do amiss to 
divest yourself at once of the honor and the trouble. 

I observe that something is to be attempted, or at least proposed in 
parliament, towards the prevention of this monstrous iniquity. Have 
you any faith in the efficacy of the expedients for either prevention 
or punishment ? How many corrupted voters, or corrupting purveyors 
of votes, will tender evidence of bribery ? Or how obtain witnesses to 
a clandestine proceeding in which themselves had no share ? How can 
the multifarious and elusive modes of bribery be reduced to any exact 
definition ? And as to intimidation, how will the elector who had not 
courage to disobey, for fear of punishment to himself, find courage to be 
prominently active towards the punishment of the tyrant ? And how, 
if he should, will you secure his subsequent impunity against revenge, 
which will conie on him in such ways as no legal provision can ob¬ 
viate ? His landlord, suppose, is convicted and punished on his evidence. 
This will be an excellent security against the prompt exercise of his 
landlord’s indisputable right to turn him out of his house or farm ! How 


190 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


much of course is it, also, that the man of wealth will continue his cus¬ 
tom to the man of trade who has been the cause of his paying a heavy 
fine, or has ineffectually attempted to do him that favor; 

It has been said that the guilt in question is not so much chargeable 
on candidates as on vile underling agents. But how many of the honor¬ 
able gentlemen have peremptorily interdicted to their agents all such 
practices; or conveyed beforehand (in imitation of some of the liberals) 
a positive assurance to the constituency that no man should suffer any 
harm from them for the freedom of his vote ; or declared they absolved 
the voters from any promises they might have been induced to make 
contrary to their judgment? And which of them, afterwards made 
aware, or strongly suspecting, that their election has been gained by 
such means, will be forward to promote the investigation and the justice ? 
What vile agent, whose activity brought the deciding votes in one of 
the late contests, would find himself and his offered services spurned 
with abhorrence by the same candidate next time ? 

I should somewhere in this paper have observed, that the ballot would 
go far to rid our elections of the abominable nuisance of outrage, bully¬ 
ing, fighting, smashing of windows, and the other flagrant breaches of 
the peace, by which a most important public transaction is so often turned 
into a scene of infamous barbarism. When the adherents of the opposed 
interest come to the place of election merely as so many individuals, 
presenting no ostensible shape of marshalled parties, there would be 
nothing tangible enough to excite the tumultuary violence. Would not 
this alone be a benefit to set off against more than half of whatever can 
be alleged against the ballot ? And it would obviate the disgust which 
the more sober, and the contempt which the more refined, portion of the 
community are apt to conceive for the whole character of democracy ; I 
may add, the aversion with which persons coming from foreign com¬ 
munities must witness the “ working,” as we name it, of our popular 
institutions. One has often imagined with shame what would be thought 
by any of the subjects of the more tolerant foreign despotisms, who might 
come to see the methods for constituting a legislature in our famous land 
of libertv. 

I am gratified to perceive that a conviction of the necessity of the 
ballot is fast gaining ground : and that, at all events, the infamous man¬ 
agement of edections will be forced on public and legislative attention. 
What is it that thus forces it into discussion, but the notoriety and 
unprecedented extent of the infamous management in the recent general 
election ? And to this very cause it is mainly owing that the tory party 
have regained the vantage ground where we have been doomed to see 
them once more. 

Lest you should* suspect that I have been stimulated to trouble you 
with the above cursory observations by some grivances experienced by 
myself, I beg, sir, to assure you that I am a perfectly 

Independent Elector. 


LETTERS. 


191 


CXC. TO MRS. HANNAH MORE.* 

Stapleton, near Bristol. 

Dear Madam, —I should never have thought of such a thing as 
requesting your acceptance of anew copy of an old and common book, on 
account of the piece prefixed to this edition of it, had not Mr. Cottle told 
me, that such a liberty had been taken by the writers of some of the 
essays accompanying the late reprints at Glasgow, of a number of other 
old books. 

I am aware that the vast accumulation on your premises, of the pro¬ 
ductions of contemporary book-makers, must have suggested to you the 
idea of the comfortable provision you will have, of materials for lighting 
your fires, in case of any scarcity of chips or shavings. But on the 
supposition that you will order them to be taken for that use in the order of 
time, that is, of their dates, I may venture to calculate on a considerable 
term of exemption for this volume ; and may even hope for it an exten¬ 
sion of that term by way of special favor, on account of so minor a part 
of it being the work of any other than the excellent Doddridge. 

If I could be confident on reckoning on any decay of memory in such 
a veteran, I should not be doing wisely in taking this opportunity of 
recalling to your recollection, by confessing my sins against, I must not 
say courtesy, but even all civility, propriety and decorum ; in having 
received, in former years, presents of copies of several of your own 
valuable works, without returning so much as a line of acknowledgment. 

I wish I could find any better extenuation than to say, that in each instance 
I really did feel grateful, and very greatly flattered ; that I intended 
writing soon to say so ; that a sad habit of procrastinating all things, 
deferred it till I became ashamed to write at all; and that then I said to 
myself in excuse, Mrs. More is necessarily quite certain, without being 
told it, that I, with every intelligent reader of her works, hold them and 
their author in high respect and admiration, and will be sure that I value 
as I ought, these personal tokens of her friendly remembrance. 

There occurred one circumstance, now many years past, which would 
have seemed to render it indispensable on my own account, however 
otherwise superfluous to you, to convey to you some brief, but strong 
expression, of my high and invariable respect, if I had not become 
informed, that a suspicion, excited in your mind against me, had been 
obviated ; I am referring to what you may have probably dismissed from 
your memory—the appearance of an unaccountably captious article in 
the Eclectic Review. No one could be more surprised and displeased at 
that article than myself; and I am confident, that from no quarter did 
the editor receive a more speedy and indignant reprehension. 

In common with all the true friends of religion and the improvement 

* This letter was, by an oversight, not inserted in its proper place in the 
series. It was written in 1825 or the following year, and therefore belongs 
to Chap. VI. 


192 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of the age, I am gratified to think to what an extraordinary length the 
sovereign Disposer of our allotment on earth has protracted your life 
and eminent usefulness. It is very pleasing to hear, that you have 
experienced a considerable alleviation of infirmity and illness. Deeply 
grateful as you must be, for having been appointed so long to prosecute 
with success, so important an employment, you will wait, with calm 
acquiescence and cheerful anticipation, the hour when the great Master 
shall call his servant to his presence and her eternal reward. I am, dear 
madam. 

With the highest respect and regard. 

Your friend and servant, 

J. Foster. 


CXCI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 


May 21, 1835. 

I HAVE to confess, I am far too much your fellow-sinner in the matter 
of being too much occupied with politics ; and 1 feel somewhat of the 
bad effect which you complain of. At the same time, as the affairs of 
the nation and the world, at this period, are prodigiously important to the 
interests (and not exclusively the temporal ones) of a very large portion 
of mankind, one makes out for one’s self a partial justification. The 
point is, how and where to adjust the limitation that ought to be imposed 
by higher interests, while one looks at the momentous crisis for good or 
evil, at which the course of time, and we may say of Providence, has 
now arrived. But these newspapers—these newspapers ! to think how 
nearly they constitute my whole reading ! I am mortified at it, and 
want to see and resolve how to mend. At any rate, I am not sorry for 
the non-appearance here of that “ Watchman.’' There was evidently a very 
competent ability ; but I was disgusted with the spirit, the servility, the 
time-serving, the practical disavowal, if not expressly in words, of the 
principles, but for the assertion of which, by nobler spirits, Methodism 
itself would never have enjoyed such immunity and privilege. The last 
number you sent, having dilated with high complacency on the complete 
establishment in power of Sir R. Peel, and the gradual subsidence into 
impotence and insignificance of the factious opposition to him, I was a 
little curious to see what would be sa\d just about tenor twelve days after, 
of the fall of the idol, on whose “ honored brow ” (that was the phrase) 
the national approbation and the crown of enduring power had descended 
and planted themselves. But, of course, it would be described as one 
of the “ awful and inscrutable dispensations of Providence,” inscrutable 
except as vindictive, it being methodistically certain, that in no other 
way than as a national judgment for our sins. Providence would permit 
the recovered ascendency of a party who are intent on abating the pesti¬ 
lent nuisance of the Irish church. 



LETTERS. 


193 


CXCII. TO H. HORSFALL, ESQ. 


June 27, 1835. 

My DEAR OLD Friend, — .... What should this letter say ? \Vhal 
should it be an answer to ? What should be taken for granted in it ? 
I may well ask myself such questions, since I have under my hand 
a letter from you, dated— exactly eleven years hack. 

.... But to think of the long tract of years since our last personal 
communication! Tliat was at a time when we might, with tolerable 
propriety, be called young men; whereas now, I dare say, I am denomi¬ 
nated among my acquaintance, “ old Fosterand I was particularly 
struck with Mr. Hamilton’s e.xpression—“ Old Mr. Horsfall!” “ OW/” 'l 
tliought that sound very strange ; my image of him is that of a young 
man. But I soon recollected myself, and tliought, what should he be 
else (and, at the same time, what should I be else ?) since between thirty 
and forty years have intervened between the present time and the time 
on which my memory is resting ? There was the additional considera¬ 
tion, that in your case there is a younger man of the same name. I 
have no son to require or suggest that note of distinction. He that might 
have been the cause of such a distinction, has been nine years in the 
grave. 

What changes in the world, in our native place, in ourselves, since 
the time we were familiarly associated! I wonder in what manner and 
degree you are changed, in every respect, of personal appearance, of 
habits, character, opinions, dispositions. As to the visible exterior, w'e 
doubtless might pass each other without the slightest recognition, the 
least hint of feeling that we had ever seen each other before. You would 
be never the vHser on the matter for a portrait w'hich I see you mention 
in your letter to have seen, if it were the one which I just recollect to 
have seen in some magazine which I chanced to open in some house where 
I had occasion to call. There could be no authority for putting it there; 
and it appeared to me a paltry imitation, with very little likeness, of a 
larger engraving, made from a drawing, for wdiich 1 very reluctantly, at 
the request of some friends hereabouts, consented to sit to a painter here, 
which drawing was very true to the subject about a dozen (or perhaps 
more) years since. 

But as to character, feelings, opinions, perhaps I may not be far wrong 
in presuming, that an uniform tenor of life, in an unchanged locality of 
residence, has prevented any other great change than what is inevitable 
from the eflect of passing through so long a course of time and experi¬ 
ence. As to myself, I can hardly tell wdiether I am much like what the 
young man was or not. In truth, I have a strangely imperfect recollec¬ 
tion of what I was in early life ; nor could I, whatever effort I might de¬ 
liberately make, draw out any clear account of what progressive time, 
though through a life of few incidents, and little change of external cir¬ 
cumstances, has wrought upon me. Indeed, I should have difficulty 

VOL. II. 14 


194 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


enough to describe what I am now. The thing 1 have the strongest 
impression of is, that I am far different from what I wish I were ; that 
my improvement, through so long a life, has been miserably deficient; 
that. In the review, I have a profound conviction of the need of pardoning 
mercy over it all; and that I earnestly hope the remainder of life, of 
whatever duration, may be much more faithfully devoted to the great 
purpose of preparing for another—that mysterious, unveiled, and awful 
hereafter, on which both of us shall make the grand experiment, at no 
very distant time at the farthest. 

.You, I believe, rather frequently preach, and I hope you will 

long be able to do so ; though in your letter, so long since, you call your¬ 
self an “ old man,” too old to journey hither ; and I think I am too old to 
journey your distance northward. And what should I find if I dH, in all 
the circuit with which I was acquainted ? Perhaps jive or six, at most, 
surviving of my ancient coevals! Happy, those of them who are gone, 
whither may the God of all grace prepare us to follow them !....! 
know not whether I should superscribe you Reverend. I thank no one 
for so designating me. 


CXCIII. TO JOHN EASTHOPE, ESQ. 

JVoveniber 20, 1S35. 

My dear Friend,— .... The Morning Chronicle has shown a 
signal and progressive improvement in execution,—in clearness, force, 
point, happy illustration, range of allusion, and— quantity. 

There is one thing I should have been disposed to make a remark on 
now and then, if I had been sitting quietly with you as at Cheltenham, 
or walking as at Malvern,—I mean, the mode, sometimes, of referring to 
the Catholic (i. e. popish) religiona slight tinge of that which makes 
the antithesis to the Rodens, O’Sullivans, & Co.—something like an im¬ 
plication, or negative admission at the least, that popery is not so bad a 
thing, that it is a religion of charity as well as any protestant mode of 
religion—something that seems to assert or assume that those furious 
and mischievous declaimers are in the wrong in toto, in their reprobation 
of popery itself, as well as their violence of temper and language, and 
perhaps the base principle and motive of some of them. Now surely we 
are not coming round to a virtual disavowal of the reformation, by a dis¬ 
covery at last that popery is not a most execrable and pernicious impos¬ 
ture, a deadly corruption of Christianity, and a system essentially intole¬ 
rant, tyrannical, and malignant. No doubt it has, as a 'practical system, 
come under some degree of compelled modification in countries where 
liberty and knowledge have acquired the ascendant. But let it not take 
the credit of that. It is in itself (as indeed itself avows) unchang- 
able. Let these compelling injiuences (which it has always done all it 
could to resist) have the credit, and not popery itself, of whatever miti¬ 
gation has practically taken place. The modern Catholics, in this country. 







LETTERS. 


195 


such as the late Butier and Eustace, the present Murray, O’Connell, &.c., 
are protesting against the imputation to them and their church, of the 
persecuting spirit and the noxious principles. They, and their religion 
too, are all charity, candor, and benevolence—if you will believe them. 
But I cannot believe them. How sliould I, while they at the same time 
avow and swear a firm fidelity to a church which by the unalterable 
laws of its institute makes intolerance—the extirpation of heretics —a 
duty ? When they come talking or canting in this strain, I would say 
to them. Your church, your sovereign authority, to which, on peril 
of your souls, y«u must maintain an inviolable fidelity,—has it ever re¬ 
voked its sanguinary decrees and injunctions ?—but indeed the very idea 
is foolish, since an infallible and unalterable authority cannot revoke its 
decrees. I would say, Do you disown the grand and final standard of 
your church, the Council of Trent ? Answer, like honest, plain-spoken 
men, Yes, or No; and don’t be playing fast and loose with us. If you 
say No, it is then in vain for you to pretend to charity, liberality and all 
that; in vain that you charge us with bigotry, and injustice in imputing 
to you the odious principles which are essentially inherent in your insti¬ 
tution. If you say. Yes, and yet profess to adhere firmly to your church, 
what becomes of your fidelity, your consistency, your honesty ? If you 
can thus, just as it serves your purpose, be ofl* and on with your adored 
church—your very religion itself—how can we depend on your integrity 
in anything else ? What, at this rate, really are your principles, and 
what is your unalterable, infallible church ? Do not falter and mystify; 
but either explicitly declare that you abjure the intolerant and murderous 
maxim.s which that church binds you to maintain, and thus bravely incur 
its anathema, or distinctly avow that you maintain those maxims,—and 
then we shall know on what ground to meet you, and on what terms to 
give you that toleration which you virtually tell us you could not in con¬ 
science grant to us, if, as in Italy or Spain, you were powerful enough to 
withhold it. Tell us you approve that exercise of the church authority 
under which, in Italy, &c., a man (not having the rights and exemptions 
of a foreigner) could not publicly avow himself a Protestant but at the 
cost of his property, liberty, and probably his life. This would be hon¬ 
estly telling us that if only you had the poiver you would do the same 
here and everywhere.—It is only on this sanguinary and exterminating, 
but essential, principle of the Romish church that I am commenting. As 
to the many fooleries and corruptions of what may be called simply re¬ 
ligious doctrine and institution, let them pass, as not directly interfering 
with the civil peace of society. Between these, however, and the bloody 
maxims of the popish church, the O’Sullivans, Boytons, &.C., are fur¬ 
nished with weapons which, vilely as they use them, there is no getting 
out of their hands. And little less to be condemned than their fanati¬ 
cism on the one hand, is, on the other, that sort of cant liberalism, now 
in vogue in some of our journals and speech-makings, which deprecates 
all zeal against popery, assuming, by implication at least, that one mode 


196 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of religion is just as good as another, that is, that none of them has any 
real basis in truth and divine authority. 

There has been expressed a great deal of contempt for the handle 
made by the fanatics of Dens’s Theology ; and some of the Irish Catholic 
prelacy have affected to consider that as but a sort of obsolete thing, and 
to wonder it should have been brought from some musty recess against 
them. Now it did, I recollect, appear to me, that the Bishop of Exeter, 
in one of his speeches, decisively saddled those ecclesiastics with thai; 
book, as a work authorized by them both formerly and at the present 
time. Those Irish Catholics have been most infamously treated, all 
along, by the government and the Protestant ascendency ; but at the 
same time their leading ecclesiastics are evasive, equivocating, disin¬ 
genuous men—not to use a harsher epithet. 

' - CXCIV. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

Stapleton, March 24, 1830. 

My dear Sir,—. ... I feel a very significant intimation of old age 
in extreme reluctance to any journeying and visiting movement, even 
when it is to see persons and things that I cannot but be gratified to 

see.One thing is, that I have grown into a great reluctance to 

meet strangers—strangers of any order whatever. I acknowledged this 
to E., who kindly said, “ Then we will have no strangers beyond one or 
two, whom I am sure you will be pleased to see.” As to seeing, beyond 
seeing him and family, and seeing you, the object is, to see London. 
I was amused by his telling me, in one of his letters, that I should be 
as quiet and retired as I pleased, have country air, &.c., while my object 
was, not to be retired at all, and to take in as little as I could help, of 
country air. What I should be after, would be in the thick of the town 
every day—in perfect contrast to the seclusion and rural scene and air 

at Stapleton.The British Museum will be a very chief object 

with me ; especially the apartment entirely occupied by engravings. 
My taste has been in that way, to an unfortunate excess, and there 
may there be inspected innumerable fine and rare things hardly to be 
seen (at least, by me) anywhere else. It is too likely I shall want 
several days, chiefly in that enormous assemblage of art and nature. 
Amidst such spectacles, however, it is a great grievance, and partly a 
shame, to me, to be so destitute as I am, of scientific knowledge. I can 
only gaze and admire in a mere outside way,—just so far as the things 
are a show to the sight. It is now too late in life for me to aim at any 
other than the most superficial knowledge. 


CXCV. TO JOHN EASTHOPE, ESQ. 

Stapleton, April 8, 1836. 

. . . . The special and duplicate paper .... instantly explained its 








LETTERS. 


1&7 


purpose, on my opening it. I had failed to notice the “ Poet’s Corner,” 
as I remember the old newspapers, in Yorkshire, used to have it. The 
successive pieces have been unequal, but for the greater part, sparkling 
and mischievous enough. Capitally fantastic, witty, and brilliant, that 
about Jupiter^s breakfast. There is the very viper’s tooth in the two 
pieces about the Chimpanzee. How one should like to have seen its 

effect on that coxcomb-. Do you ever happen to hear how these 

detonating balls are actually taken by those they are thrown at ? The 
thorough veterans, one has always heard, maintain their philosophy per¬ 
fectly well under such assailments; but to the greener sort one would 
fancy they may be rather annoying. 

The graier people (of whom I am one) have their objection, and may 
have it without being at all ultra-puritanical, to that tinge of profaneness 
which the satirist infuses into some of his pieces. Perhaps Jupiter and 
Hebe might be very well allowed to consign themselves to the Devil, 
but they had better not have done it in the hearing of the many decorous 
and even religious people who may be supposed to read the Morning 
Chronicle. It is really not well-judged, even on the score of good taste, 
and what I may call literary dignity, to make no higher reference, in the 
most witty as well as most ingenious and elegant poet now alive, to in¬ 
dulge himself in diction and allusions accommodated to the appetite of 
men who trifle with the most serious subjects—an appetite which he 
probably does in his own mind hold in condemnation and contempt. 
The wit and the penal justice of satire should eschew such an unworthy 
association. 


CXCVI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, the longest day, 1836. 

My dear Sir,— .... The thing most on my mind just at this in¬ 
stant is—chagrin, vexation, mortification, self-accusation, for a chief 
folly of my life— having bought so many books; which are looking in¬ 
sultingly .at me from their crowded shelves all round the room ; and I 
seem to hear a note of scorn from within sundry boxes, in which are 
immured a score or two of the splendid and costly ones—in which score 
or two are sunk a sum which would have furnished a very decent whole 
library for a dissenting, or even a Methodist preacher. 

I am the more irritably sensitive to this mockery of theirs from the 
condition of my eyes, which, during all the summer part of the year (and 
this year especially), cannot endure the business of reading without a 
very painful force put on them. 

Wlien to this disablement of.the reading organ, I add the consideration 
that, however good that organ were, a whole century of years from this 
time would not suffice to read once through all these volumes—and then 
the other circumstance, that I forget everything I read or have read 
_and then cap this accumulation of considerations with one more, or 



198 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


rather the double, consideration of what has been expended, r ot only of 
income, but of hundreds of pounds of principal sunk—and the difference 
between what they cost and what the very same books might be had for 
710 W—when I put all these items of mortification together, the result is 
a very hot caustic on my conscience as well as on other parts of the men¬ 
tal sensorium. 

.... To be sure, some of these things may have been of some little 
value, for pleasure or perhaps a certain kind of instruction, in the mean¬ 
time, but nothing like enough to compensate the difference. A rich man 
would not need to care, but when I consider how straitened, during a 
whole quarter of a century, my limited means have been, by the indul¬ 
gence in the fine sort of literature, I cannot help feeling mortification and 
self-reproach. Especially I feel so at the thought how much better it 
would have been for a considerable part of this expenditure, if I could 
really spare it, to have gone to the service of charitable and religious 
objects. Not that I have not managed to do my share in that way also; 
perhaps beyond some of my better endow^ed neighbors ; but I should most 
willingly have done more in that way but for the unfortunate drain afore¬ 
said. And so too would my late beloved associate, one of the most 
liberal-minded of human beings. It is, indeed, one of my regrets in the 
remembrance of her, that this imprudent expenditure imposed too hard 

an economy on her benevolence.But for a very unexpensive 

manner of life (the preclusion of luxury, travelling, &c,) the expenditure 
in question would have been impossible. I am reminded of “ Whose 
shall those things he which thou hast provided The book-and-print 
fineries will most likely, as in all other cases, go to the auction room one 
day or other, and will bring for—who can tell whom ? perhaps a fourth 
part of what they cost. As to the crowd of the common order of books, 
I should willingly make presents of some hundreds of volumes; but I 
find that, excepting such as I am still unwilling to dislodge from the 
shelves, they are, for the most part, not of a kind to be of any use to per¬ 
sons I would give ^them to. Sundry useful and some valuable ones I 
have, for several years past, given to some of the most meritorious of the 
students in the Academy; and a number (such as the late Anderson 
judged to he necessary and useful) have gone to its library. 

.... Do you stand quite aloof from the grand dissenting commotion 7 
They—(I say not we, for 1 should not have been a concurring particle in 
the dust the dissenters have raised,—I mean as to the extent of their de¬ 
mands) .... have mistaken their policy in calling out (at present) for 
the “ separation,"" a thing most palpably impracticable, till a few more 
Olympiads have passed over us. 


CXCVII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, Aug. 19, 1836. 

. . . . With about, perhaps, one-tenth part of your experience of local 




LETTERS. 


199 


removals, I can yet well understand what an annoyance it is. Have you 
any particular feeling about becoming attached to a spot, simply as a 
place of residence ? I have always felt an indisposition to contract such 
an attachment, independently of not having had any strong local cause 
for it, and from a kind of feeling of incongruity between such adhesions 
and our grand destiny to leave, ere long, all earthly localititS—to aban¬ 
don the globe itself. I have mused sometimes in wonder, when I have 
seen persons, perhaj)s far forward beyond the youthful age, building 
houses, laying out grounds, contriving, and assiduous in making, what 
are called “ improvementsdelighted with the spot, pulling their friends 
about through walk after walk, and from point to point, to show them 
how beautiful, how commodious, how improved from its original condi¬ 
tion ; how, perhaps, picturesque; “ Isn’t it a pleasant spot to set one’s 
self down in ?” One’s silent reflection was—“ Yes; and for how long ?” 
Some of them will say, it is in consideration of their families, of “ my 
son—but the truth is almost always, it is chiefly their own passion for 
the thing, in forgetfulness of the funeral that will, one no immensely dis¬ 
tant day, be seen passing from this pleasant abode to one narrow, cold, 
and dark enough. I have always thought, that were I a man of fortune, 
and located in what is called a “ seat,” I should take no kind of interest 
about its adjustments and “ improvesuents,” beyond some matter of mere 
immediate convenience. 

.... I felt no very strong excitement (too old and too cold) among 
the wonders and the grandeurs of the great Babylon, but in returning 
into the stillness of this obscure den, I felt, for a week or more, as if I 
could do nothing but sleep.In looking from the top of the Colos¬ 

seum, over the city, the first on our planet beyond all doubt or compari¬ 
son, one could not help the invading thought. What an awful, what a 
direful spectacle it was in one view,—the stupendous amount of sin in it. 
Oh, when will the predicted better age arrive ? 

Thanks for the Watchman; but you will not send the other number; 
nobody in this world is willing to let one know the whole truth of 
things. 


CXCVIII. TO JOHN PURSER, ESQ. 

Stapleton^ August 26, 1S3G. 

My dear Sir, .... I am very much gratified by the information, 
that you have resumed your proper position, as adherent and assistant to 
the Baptist interest in Dublin. No man can have a higher respect than 
I (as far as my knowledge goes) for the Moravians. But I confess I was 
sorry for your (apparent) secession from what I will call “ the good old 
cause,” in the long protracted day of its adversity. 

A good while since I heard of the relinquishment of Swift’s Alley. I 
am now gratified by Mr. Bliss’s information, that a substitute is rising, 
or on tlie point of rising, in so vastly different a locality as Stephen’s 



200 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


Green. If the change in the condition of what we name the inlei'exl^ 
shall at all correspond to such a change of place, a hap[)y season will 

come at last.What a long history of depression ! dating from and 

including my own temporary occupation there. I am too conscious of 
my own great deficiency in my duty there, to have anything to say of my 
many successors; in all reason and candor, I ought, and am most ready, 
to believe that none of them has been equally deficient. 

This self-accusatory recollection put aside, how many images belong¬ 
ing to those times arise in my memory ! Your estimable parents it were 

superfluoi>3 even to name, or your sister.I'here was Meath- 

dwelling, Montpelier, the scenes of the vicinity, the park, the barracks, 
the school-room on (was it not ?) Ari'an Quay; the numberless talks 
among us on numberless subjects, yourself a prompt and very shrewd 
interlocutor. There were the “ Sons of Brutus,”' w^atched, they were 
told after they had ceased to meet, by Major Sirr, and among them the 
intelligent Green, master of some parish school (on second thought, I am 
not sure he was one of them, or, I should say, us). 

.... Perhaps it is probable that I, having an insulated remembrance 
—a retrospect enclosed and secluded as it were, within a section of time 
severed from the before and after—may have a more marked and distinct 
ideal vision than you; since, living on, permanently, the same ground, 
you would partly lose the things of that time in their sequel, seeing many 
of them gradually and insensibly changing and passing away, by a pro¬ 
cess that had no one great chasm to separate off the former stage, as one 
scene remaining alone in your memory. As to some other things (local¬ 
ities and objects not subject to change), having continued habitually fa¬ 
miliar to you, they are, to you, simply, if I may so express it, what they 
are, and not what they stand pictured exclusively in the remembrance— 
remembrance that lays the scene in a far-off time. 

I have still to confess, and am somewhat vexed at it, the total want of 
power in my mind to make one person of you two, the hoy whom I so 
vividly remember, and the middle-aged 7nan, whom I had the surpri.^e and 
pleasure of seeing one day here. I even doubt whether, if 1 wore to pass 
weeks and months daily with you, I should be able to make anytliing like 
a complete personal identification. I do believe the John Purser, of far 
towards forty years since, would be continuaily coining in upon me as 
if he must be, or have been, somebody else than' the person 1 was actiually 
seeing and conversing with. It would, no doubt, be partly the same with 
respect to Mrs. Purser, of whom I retain a distinct imago, though my 
being so much less familiar with her at that time, might somewhat lossen 
this insuperable sense of doubleness. The experiment, at any rate, would, 
to me, be very curious and interesting. 

.... My dear friend, the retrospect over which I have been glanc¬ 
ing, pensively as a prevailing sentiment, seems to carry us rather afar on 
a track which we can tread no more ; but how I’educed to nothing is the 
distance in comparison of the stupendous prospect! While called to bo 




LETTERS. 


201 


grateful for all that a good Providence has done for us in the past, and 
to implore pardon in the name of our Lord, for everything which we had 
cause to wish liad been differently done on our part, we are solemnly 
admonished to be looking forward, with increasing seriousness, to the 
gratid Futurity. Whatever may be our appointed remaining time" on 
eaith, we are sure it is little enough for a due preparation to go safely 
and happily forward into that eternal Hereafter. 


CXCIX. TO MRS. STOKES. 

Bourton, Oct. 7, 1836." 

My dear Madam, .... In this house and vicinity there are many 
things to remind me of the past. I have not in my mind a strongly as¬ 
sociating principle. There are certain temporary, involuntary, and ap¬ 
parently casual moods of feeling, which, in whatever place they may 
occur, revive the images and sentiments of the past more vividly than 
they would be brought back by the mere force of objects and places asso¬ 
ciated with those retrospective interests. Still, there are here objects, 
apartments, garden-walks, with which an interesting and pensive memory 
is inseparably connected. They tell me of one inestimable being, united 
with me here, here separated from me, and now, here or elsewhere, with 
me no more on earth. I often imagine what it would have been, and 
would be, to have her with me still. But when I consider what a droop¬ 
ing, suffering life was appointed to her, during the latter part of her 
presence with me, and what I am confident she has gained by the change, 
the regret for my loss is greatly countervailed by the delight of thinking 
of her felicity; of the surpassing superiority of what she has enjoyed, 
and is enjoying, over all she could have experienced in this mortal state, 
even had it been much more propitious to her than it could have been, 
under the circumstances of frail and shattered health, and a painful over¬ 
susceptibility of mind. To rejoin her at length is my earnest desire for 
her daughters and myself. As to them, I am exceedingly far from in¬ 
dulging any gratifying anticipations with respect to this life. I have 
uniformly a melancholy idea of the destiny of women, considering how 
many kinds of danger, and how much of the grievances and sufferings 
of life there are often in their allotment. How I marvel at the thought¬ 
less pleasure of parents, in seeing their children grow up, and dreaming 
about their future prospects !. I often say, what is become of their eyes 
or any of their senses, while there is the actual world around them, to 
tell them what is the very possible destiny in this life, to say no¬ 
thing of another, of the young creatures, about whom they have so 
many thoughtlessly sanguine fancies ! I will hope better things for these 
girls ; but I never dream such dreams, and never did. 

Worcester, also, had its reminiscences. What a lapse of years since 
the first time that I experienced there the cordial friendship, of which I 




202 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


have had so many gratifying proofs, in the long subsequent interval; 
and since the first of our little social travelling adventures, which were 
to be followed by our delightful excursions in North Wales. More, much 
more than the third part of life, taken at its long reckoning of “ three 
score years and ten,” gone away, since that point of our mortal sojourn! 
How many events, changes, mercies, admonitions, in this long period ! 
Would that the improvements, of the most important order, had corres¬ 
ponded to this great sum of the motives, and aids, and progressively 
louder calls to that improvement. My own reflections are deeply ac¬ 
cusatory. I often think, what insupportable melancholy would oppress 
and overwhelm me, if there were not the grand resource of the one all- 
sufticient Sacrifice offered for sin. At the same time, let us, each and 
all, entreat the Divine assistance, that whatever remainder of time is 
reserved for us, may be so improved as to be greatly the best part of a 
life which is so rapidly hastening to its termination. I remain, dear 
madam. 

Yours, with cordial and grateful regard, 

and ever friendly wish, 

J. Foster. 


CC. TO J. WADE, ESQ. 

December 21, 

.... But what base, worthless wretches those fellows are. It is 
really grievous and surprising, that never once can a sober, honest man 
be found that will do just the very moderate duty that you require. It 
makes one sometimes almost ashamed of one’s democracy, to have so 
many glaring proofs of the utterly unprincipled character of so large a 
portion of what are called “ the lower orders,” in a nation so vaunted 
for “enlightened,” “civilized,” “Christian,” and all that. One is amazed 
to hear any intelligent advocate of the popular rights,^^ &\\ckYw\g for 
“ universal suffi'ageY’ Think of such fellows as you have to do with, 
being qualified to have a vote in the choice of legislators !! 


CCI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

February 18, 1837. 

.... We, of this little family, are not duly thankful to the protect¬ 
ing Providence for having all escaped, while multitudes in the city and 
its neighborhood have been visited, and very many, as I hear, fatally. 
At this instant I see through the window the top of a mourning coach, 
following a hearse. Strange and sad consideration ! that prevailing 
sickness and death are the desired, welcomed (?) means of life, gain, 
prosperity, to a portion of the fellow-mortals of the sufferers and victims. 




LETTERS. 


203 


Doctors, druggists, and undertakers, are flourisliing on this calamity, 
like gay flowers about the graves in a church-yard. 

The disastrous and, one thinks, unprecedented season does at length 
give some wavering and reluctant signs of change. The change has 
not been waited for by the intimations of spring, in snow-drops and 
crocuses. Welcome are they once more, though they seem to tell me, 
most pointedly, how short a time since their tribe was here before, and 
therefore with what appalling velocity life is running off. 

Your guess is true that I have been (though not violently against my 
will) very nearly a prisoner, during the past months. As to “ company,” 
dinner-parties, tea-\'isits, they have been, with very small exceptions, out 
of the question. I have been under peremptory medical inhibition to be 
out in the night air. A cough, first occasioned by the old cause, the 
miserable heating and subsequent chilling from the wet clothes in sum¬ 
mer, and renew'ed at intervals down into the foggy autumn, produced at 
last an effect which I was forced to regard as somewhat serious—an 
effusion, not large (and not repeated) of blood, from. Dr. Stenson told 
me, the wdndpipe, and together wfitli prescriptions, enjoined me to keep 
within the house, and to avoid—one thing and another—as especially 
preaching, an infrequent, indeed, but now and then occurring exercise. 
I have been tolerably, though (except on the last point) not punctiliously 
obsequious, have had no return of the ominous symptom, and have very 
little cough,—but find myself far more liable to its return, from a very 
slight cold-taking, than a person sound in the affected part would be. 

.... As to public and parliamentary affairs, you complain that we 
are to have the same old battled business over again. But how else can 
any gofxl l>e gained against the obstinate resisters of all improvement ? 
As O’Connell was lately telling them in Ireland, it is only by keeping at 
it, by persisting, reiterating, hammering, that an effectual impression 
can be made on the public mind, and through that, on the hostile obsti¬ 
nacy, or sluggish indifference of those on whom immediately the busi¬ 
ness depends. Some parts of that business are of an importance and an 
urgency quite portentous. Think of the condition of Ireland, in the 
event of the frustration of the measures in its favor—such a frustration 
as should not leave any hope of success within a near and assured pros¬ 
pect. Those who can coolly look at, and hazard, the probable conse¬ 
quences, must be either villains or madmen. 


CCII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, April 15, 1837.' 

.... You are hardly unaware that there is something a little falla¬ 
cious in your mood of thinking and feeling about activity in public 
affairs. If all well-principled and able men were to indulge that mood, 
the great interests of the community would go desperately to corruption 



204 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


and ruin. Just think, for want of the requisite number, activity, and 
co-operation of such men, what a condition those interests Jiave been in, 
for a long succession of years, up to the commencement of the recent 
national rousing. A vast liell of wars ; bad legislation; profligacy in 
all administration; all correction of old rotten institutions resisted ; total 
indifference to the uneducated, barbarous condition of the people ; every 
kind of corruption practised with impunity, under protection of a mono¬ 
poly of power; hatred, almost or wholly to the length of persecution, 
of those who have dared to expose the iniquities and preacli reform. Has 
it not struck you, over and over again, that every part of the system, on 
coming at last under resolute investigation, has turned out worse than 
all previous opinion or suspicion had surmised ? Now are good men to 
be told that all this is no concern of theirs, and on the plea of not involv¬ 
ing themselves in the turmoil of worldly and political affairs, quietly and 
piously to let it all go on, from bad to worse; to leave it all in the same 
profligate hands,—till Providence shall work a miracle for its reforma¬ 
tion ? It is but slight rebuke that you will incur for one particular in 
your avowal, that you care “ far more about my poor Catherine and 
John, than for either king or country, church or state but when you 
say the same thing of what constitutes the collective community, with 
their immense collective interests, do you forget that there are unnum¬ 
bered thousands of other Johns and Catherines, to be affected for good or 
evil, in numberless ways, by the benefleial or injurious operation of the 
national system ? If all had acted on the principle of caring'little about 
any but their own, we should have had no public spirited men ; no pa¬ 
triots ; no magnanimous vindicators of the rights of the oppressed; 
none who, while their own families were the first in their regard, yet felt 
indignant that myriads of other families were the worse, in various ways 
and degrees, for a corrupt and vicious management of the concerns of 
the community. The crisis of the affairs of this country, balancing and 
wavering between the growing impulse toward improvements of incal¬ 
culable value, and the powerful, obstinate resistance made by the old 
corrupt system—a crisis including the perfectly tremendous state and 
possibilities of Ireland, and involving the interests of perhaps a million 
of families there, are not, methinks, matters which any of us should 
deem insignificant in comj)arison with our own domestic interests. Un¬ 
less a vast number -and combination of men, while maintaining all due 
regard for what they respectively have at home, will yet take a zea¬ 
lous and untiring concern in these public affairs^ designs of immense 
utility will be frustrated, and there will inevitably be a long course of 

agitation, danger, and disaster.So ends my sermon, and most 

likely with the same effect as too many other sermons. 


CCIII. TO J. PURSER, JR., ESQ. 

Stapleton, May 30, 1S37. 

My dear Sir, — .... Many of my recollections of early life have 





LETTERS. 


205 


faded, and they never had the captivation and complacency which some 
men seem to feel. But the sojourn in Dublin is often revived in my 
memory with peculiar distinctness, and a pleasing though pensive inte¬ 
rest. In the time and scene thus recalled, you, as in your early juve- 
nility, are a conspicuous figure. I have a very marked image of your 
appearance and looks—of which I dare say you yourself have retained 
no image at all, no more than I have of mine, as at that or an earlier 
stage of life. Can you shape anything like a defined conception of what 
were your prevailing feelings, notions, tastes, aspirations, at that time ? 

What an immensity of things have passed over, and away from, every 
earthly scene in this interval of forty years! You say that in Dublin I 
should “ find much to revive old recollections.” I almost doubt it. A 
few localities excepted, there must be so complete a sweep from the 
stage, that liie things for recolleclion to hold by are gone. There cannot 
be the lingering remainders to recall what was. As to the living world, 
it would be just wholly new, not connected wdth the preceding, by retain¬ 
ing still some portion of it, to verify the relationship, to show it to be in 
continuity and succession. Why, there is not probably one single human 
being, besides yourself and your wife, that would be, or could be made, 
an object of my recollection. One other there would have been, it 
seems, very recently. JMy eye was very strongly arrested by the name 
of Mrs. Butler. IIow w'ell I remember her! What then, she has lived 
throughout this wide interval, approaching to half a century, and having 
not beon a young person at its so remote commencement! She would 
have been one of the diminutive number of the vital threads of con¬ 
nection (if I may so express it) between the existing generation and that 
which has vanished. But the feeling at sight of her would have been 
something like what should say, “ Why are you lingering here, belong¬ 
ing so plainly as you do to the great company that is departed ?” 

The class of us the most advanced in age are for the most part so 
blended and implicated with the next in order, and the next after that, that 
it requires some thought to detach ourselves so as to see plainly where we 
stand. We are apt to be looking too much around us, and behind us, to 
observe how near we are to the brirdc. If even I, at the age of nearly 
sixty-seven, and much apart from society and w^orldly concerns, need con¬ 
tinual admonitions about this, you, at a dozen or more years behind me, 
and so closely surrounded by numerous and diversified family interests, 
with business in additino, will be very apt to need every monitory intima¬ 
tion how much of life is gone, and how fast the remainder is going. 

For myself I have recently had some extra and ominous liints, or rather 
very direct warnings. A succession of colds and coughs, within the last 
year or two, added to a relaxation of the throat, which twenty or more 
years since disabled me for regular preaching, has had the effect of leav¬ 
ing me kable to an effusion of blood, from the rupture of some vessel 
adjacent to the throat. This has occurred several times"within the last 
half year, the worst instance of it being within the last few days. I am 
not advised that this involves or indicates “ immediate danger ” (that is tho 




206 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


phrase you know), but that it imperatively speaks the necessity ©f grea 
caution, medical assistance, the avoidance “ for the present ” (another of 
the phrases), of all considerable exertion in the way of speaking, and a 
total, final interdict on preaching. 

You speak of “grey hairs and some debility of action.” Qikte in the 
natural course ; and you will lay your account with an increase (perhaps 
in an increasing ratio) of these significant intimations. Yet I hope you 
will yet long (but in how modified sense of that word!) retain a compe¬ 
tence of strength and health for much useful activity, combined with a 
considerable degree of the enjoyment of life;—still with a constant re¬ 
collection, that it is an introduction, and is verging continually and fast 
toward a solemn junction with that to which it is the introduction. And 
what will that be ? Oh the mystery of that great Hereafter! 

I congratulate you sincerely on the pleasure and every other advan¬ 
tage caused you by an excellent wife and- eight descendants ! You 

would show me, you say, six sons; —but I should be frightened; —nay, 
what is to ensure me against actual danger ? Six young Irishmen,—and 
Irishmen being such as you describe them, that is to say, of “ ferocious 
disposition,” needing strong coercion for the safety of those who have to 
do with them. Assuredly I should not dare to confront those redoubt¬ 
able SIX one moment sooner or longer than you were present, and indeed- 
Mrs. P. in addition, in order to secure the mitigating, lenient eftect of fe¬ 
male influence. With this and a few other provisos I should enter your 
house (castle) with very great interest, and by the time I was certain of 
safety, should stay some time there, and thereabout, with very great pleasure. 
I thank you sincerely for your kind invitation. I have never quite sur¬ 
rendered the idea and the hope of revisiting Dublin; but I am become 
to a strange degree a sort of local fixture; not having, for instance, till 
last summer, reached so far as London for sixteen years. And now the 
recent indications as to health tend to throw doubtfulness on all projects 
and prospects. 

Everybody in his right senses here deplores the state of Ireland, and 
abhors that Ascendency which has hitherto been its plague, and has yet 
a formidable power to frustrate the endeavors at a better policy. Our 
government is in a strangely anomalous and perilous position. There 
will be a long protracted and mortal conflict. 

.... I have just heard of the death of Mrs. Osborn of Cork, for 
whom, as Ainn Richards, I had a great partiality. I have regretted to 
understand that she was a confirmed Socinian; greatly regretted it; for 
it does appear to me a tremendous hazard to go into the other world in 
that character. The exclusion from Christianity of that which a Soci¬ 
nian rejects would reduce me instantly to black despair. 

CCIV. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT. 

June 2, 1837. 

My dear old Friend,—. ... It must be since I wrote to you that I 





LETTEKS. 


207 


had a long conversation with Mrs. J-, lately of Hebden Bridge, in 

which I obtained several points of information concerning the terra incog¬ 
nita of that neighborhood. As to Ilebden Bridge itself, she described it 
as stretched out into a long continuity of houses, reaching I forget how 
far. This, on a more moral account than its breaking up the old picture 
in my imagination, did not please me at all. It was just saying there 
were so many more sinners in the locality. Unless mankind were better, 
an augmented number is nothing to be pleased with. On the contrary I 
am always apt to be pleased at seeing vacated sites, and houses deserteu 
and in ruins. This gratification is too seldom afforded in these times. 
It is a considerable number of years since I had it to my full content¬ 
ment, at a place a good way down on the west coast, where a score or 
two of houses, visited some years before by the reform of a fire, remained 
as dilapidated walls going fast to decay. I have always a restive feeling 
tliat knows not how to go into pleasure, at the promises sometimes made 
to the Jews in the Old Testament, of a prodigiously multiplied posterity. 
Now you are smiling (or affecting to smile) at all this as a cynical whim, 
a wanton perversity. But pray, now, do look at the collective moral and 
religious state of the species, even in this so vaunted nation, exhibiting so 
sad a preponderance'of what is not good, in the high and alone satisfac¬ 
tory sense; and soberly consider whether an augmentation of such an 
existence be really a cause for exultation. 

A better age, both for this and every other country, will come, assur¬ 
edly. But do you not sometimes muse in a kind of gloomy wonder on 
tJie present dark aspect of the world,—in which even the precursory 
signs of the approach are so faint or dubious ? You were not, I think, 
quite so sanguine in early life as I was. Recollecting my morning, 
crude, prospective dreams, I can imagine what a damp it would have been, 
what a heavy snow in May, if I could have foreseen, at the distance of 
about half a century forward, the state of the world just as it actually is 
at this day. In those visions there was, no doubt, much of what a sound 
mature judgment might, at the time, have convicted of folly. The grand 
excitement had far too little in it of a moral and religious principle, far 
t'oo little recognition of the Governor of the world, to authorize such 
magnificent anticipations of moral and political good. But still, methinks, 
it might (before the proof) have been assumed as probable that such a 
prodigious awakening of human energy would be directed by that sove¬ 
reign Power to the destruction of a much larger portion of the fearful 
system of evils that s.till lies and tyrannizes on the human race. On 
every field of thought the awful mystery of the divine government sur¬ 
rounds us with its darkness, and abases our speculations and presumptions. 

The political state of this nation is becoming formidable, the war being 
mortal between the two orders of principles, with their respectively 
arrayed masses. No peace but by the subjugation of one of the anta¬ 
gonist powers. Which is it to be ? Not the democratic certainly, for it is 
in a process of continually augmenting force, notwithstanding any tern- 





208 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


porary interruptions and defeats. But it is in vain to calculate the dura¬ 
tion of the conflict before the other can be prostrated, possessed as it is 
of such vast advantages. 

How do the aftairs among you as between the church and dissenters 
shape themselves ? I hope the latter will not be wanting in spirit to as¬ 
sert themselves. They see clearly now that they have no other remedy 
but what is in their own hands. Let them everywhere avail themselves 
of that, and the government will at last be forced, even for the church's 
sake, to do them justice. Our great desideratum is (what we cannot 
have yet, nor for a long time) a genuine House of Commons. In the 
present thing so called there are many scores of knaves and fools, who 
got there by the vilest means. 

We (you, your wife, and I) sliall not live to see any great amendment 
in the world. Shall we, when in that other to which we are going, 
receive any information of the changes on that which we shall have 
left ? But think of the stupendous change and novelty of being in 
another loorld! And it will not be very long before. Each of us in 
near approach to seventy! I believe you have both had good health. I 
hope you still have—/oy* that age. I have been in this respect highly 
favored through life. But recently,—I may say at this hour, I have 
some very monitory omens, being under rigid medical treatment in con¬ 
sequence of tbe rupture of some vessel in the neighborhood of the 
throat, indicated by a very considerable effusion of blood twice within 
ten days. I am told that great and protracted care may arrest the evil. 
But it is a formidable intimation; and will, I hope, have the effect, under 
divine influence, of rendering me more earnest in preparation for tlie 
demolition, at whatever time, of the whole tabernacle. A circumstance 
of the same kind, but not in the same degree, occurred to me about 
half a year since. So long exempt from any recurrence, I have not 
been duly careful. 


CCV. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

June 9, 1837. 

.... It often occurs to me, when thinking of striking spectacles 
here and there on the earth that I can never see, “ But I shall infallibly 
behold, at no distant time, something incomparably more striking, new, 
and marvellous.” To behold, to be in the midst of, another economy, 
another world ! And with an amazing change, of the very manner, 
personally, of existence ; to be in communication with a new order of 
realities by a totally different medium of perception ; having, in relin¬ 
quishing this world, relinquished also the entire organization by which 
the spirit maintained its connection with it. 

Imagine a very brief, as nearly as might be a sudden, transition from 
die ordinary state of feeling, to that which would be caused at sight of 
the most striking phenomenon on earth; and then imagine, just at that 




LETTERS. 


209 


highest excitement of emotion, an instant transition by death into the 
other world ;—would not this second rush of amazement on the soul 
transcend the previous one to a far mightier degree than the previous 
one would have surpassed the ordinary state of feeling ? 

But again, and again, comes the thought, “ Tliough I shall never be¬ 
hold the supposed grand phenomena of this world, that other transcendent • 
amazejment 1 am certain to experience; and the more mighty will it be 
that r have no previous knowledge or conjecture concerning the manner 
of it.” 

And how mortifying, what reason for intense self-reproach, that with 
this certainty before me, and in a continual approximation, the mysteri¬ 
ous prospect should not have a more habitually commanding influence 
over me ;—over my thoughts, devotions, and habits of life ! A correc¬ 
tion, a reformation, a renovation of feeling, is the thing imperatively 
demanded. . . . 


CCVI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

September 23, 1837. 

.... This is All-Saints’ day with the Independent tribe in Bristol;— 
speeches by exhibitors fresh from all nations, peoples, and languages. 
I was something like disposed to force my inclination, and go to see and 
hear, for the useful sake, to myself I mean, of witnessing the character 
and varieties of the spectacle; but the inveterate repugnance was in¬ 
vincible. But really I wish it had not [been]. For I am so totally secluded 
here that I have no immediate impression of what men are, or are 
doing. 

It seems that even you .... could not keep the soul of which you 
are the owner from getting a whirl in the late great vortex; wishing, 
hoping, fearing; disappointed, mortified, indignant; just all the same 
unhallowed emotions as one’s self. It is truly a grievous result, and a. 
disastrous predicament. Interminable war, now, with very small and 
dear-bougl]t successes to the liberal cause; merely an exemption from 
absolute defeat; the grand measures of national improvement {education 
amono- the rest) either not (from hopelessness) attempted, or contempt¬ 
uously quashed. Why is this suffered to be—under the government of 
the supreme Authority, the only Potentate ? Just because the nation is 
to be wicked and is to be plagued. It is a judicial dispensation. This 
is the idea often forced on one’s mind, in looking over the state of the 
world. What a glaring instance is Spain ! One would think that it is 
beyond mere human stupidity and perversity to manage the nation’s af¬ 
fairs so wretchedly. There must be a special divine malediction, doom¬ 
ing that barbarous, cruel, superstitious, and bigoted people to miseries 
from which there seems no escape; their counsels and proceedings 
under a continual infatuation; the most favorable occasions lost; the 

VOL. II. 15 



210 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


efficient means systematically thrown away; the whole condition of life 
and life’s interests in distraction. 


CCVII. TO B. STOKES, ESQ. 

' Aou. 25, 1837. 

.... Our good M. P. has but little in prospect, in that public ca¬ 
pacity, to set against what in his private one he feels so painfully. lie 
enters the service justly indignant against every party, and has little or 
nothing better to look forward to than a long, vexatious, and nearly 
useless course of toil and conflict, perhaps to end in a break-up of the 
whole rotten concern. I wish he were out of it, if only there were 
another honest man to take his place. But that sort of thing is most 
scandalously scarce—the sort of thing, that is to say, which every man 
in the world ought to be.—It is fearful to think what the final account 
must be, at the award of infallible Justice, for the immense multitude 
of accountable creatures. And how desperately heedless of all such 
consideration they are, even those who, as in our nation and time, are 
the most instructed, or have the means of being so, and are therefore 

the most accountable.But these politics run away with one, 

even when talking to old friends, with whom one has so many recollec¬ 
tions, lively or pensive, and has spent so many hours, days, and weeks, 
amidst interests, occupations, and scenes, far apart from political affairs. 
Lately I was recollecting our first interview, when Mr. Coles brought a 
stranger, in whom I could not foresee so cordial a friend for so long a 
period; as to whom and myself it was little within the probability of 
life’s duration that I should at this (then very far off) time be writing 
to him. I proceeded on, from that original point of remembrance, 
through the successive periods of the long lapse of nearly thirty years; 
dwelling a whilb on some of the most remarkable times and scenes, 
down to the social weeks, or rather months, of the last year; and to the 
time when, excepting a few pleasing hours, I was disappointed of see¬ 
ing you here. A long series of interesting reminiscences,—combining 
what is gratifying in friendship with what is memorable in situations 
and incidents. All this is of the past!—and the review brings us to the 
solemn reflection, what a very large portion of our allotted sojourn on 
earth has been expended and has vanished, between the first term and 
the last of the retrospect; which reflection passes immediately into the 
emphatic monition, how near we are coming to the termination of that 
sojourn, to the moment of transition to another world; and how earnest 
and habitual should be our solicitude and our diligence to be prepared 
for that world wliere there may be a happy and an endless friendship.... 


CCVIII. TO JAMES FAWCETT, ESQ. 

February 24,1838. 

Dear Sir,— .... The feelings with which I heard of the decease 






LETTERS. 


211 


(not till several weeks after the event) of my valued old friend, your ex¬ 
cellent father, were pensive even to sadness. He and Mr. Greaves 
were the peculiarly favorite friends of my youth. And so deeply fixed 
was my conviction of his virtues, and so faithful my memory of his 
cordial kindness at that far-off period, and additionally testified by his 
letters, that I have retained invariably my friendly regard throughout 
the long absence of not less than thirty-five years. Since the informa¬ 
tion of the mournful event I have often retraced in thought the scenes, 
the intercourse, the little social adventures and incidents, of that early 
time; his person, voice, habits, and domestic associates and circum¬ 
stances, are vividly presented to my imagination. I cannot but feel re¬ 
gret, now when it is in vain, at the entire loss of personal intercourse, 
caused by great distance, my dislike of travelling, my feeling no attrac¬ 
tion to my native place, as such, and our respective occupations. I am 
wondering how he appeared in advanced age; the image of him in my 
mind being exclusively that of his appearance in youth, or before the 
attainment of middle age. I saw him for the last time, one transient 
hour in the neighborhood of London : but I think it was not within the 
long period that I have mentioned. Doubtless if we had met at any 
recent time, without being previously apprised, it would have been, till 
explanation, as perfect strangers; mutually the victims and monuments 
of Time. 

.... You will all have been consoled amidst your affectionate sorrow 
by the consideration of his happy exchange ; an event deferred, too, for 
the sake of those whom he loved and who loved him, to so late a period 
of life, that any great prolongation would have been a stage of infirmity, 
decline, and perhaps the pains which inflicLas it were, a portion of death 
before the termination of life. He had lived ^so to see his family ad¬ 
vanced to maturity, acting their appointed parts in life ; and all, I hope 
and trust, entered on and pursuing a course which will bring each of 
them one day to an end like his. You have the pleasure also of reflect¬ 
ing on his consistent, honorable, and useful life, from his pious childhood 
to his latest day ;—a well-sustained religious character for I may say, 
sixty years, for he must at his decease have been bordering on seventy. 

A loss which nothing now in this world can adequately compensate 
will have caused your mother a painful sense of desolation, at an age 
Vhich no longer retains the elasticity of spirit, the animated force of 
reaction, by which younger people, in active excitement and with life 
before them, are so soon relieved from the pressure of such a dispensa¬ 
tion. I trust resignation to the Divine will, the looking forward to a 
better world, combined with the affectionate interest in her children, and 
the pleasure of seeing them wise and good, and favored by Providence, 
will impart to her a consolation effectual to cheer the remainder of her 
life. How well I remember lier cheerfulness, her vivacity of spirit, near 
forty years since.lam glad of [your] brother’s favorable pros¬ 

pects for usefulness and happiness, and hope that a name so long honored 



212 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


in connection with religion, will long continue faithfully in that con¬ 
nection. 


CCIX. TO THE REV. DR. PRICE. 


^ February, 1S3S. 

.... Professor Elton of Rhode Island, has sent me a very curious 
book of the date indeed of three or four years back, written by an 
“Honorable Mr. Durfee, Supreme Judge” in that island. It is a poem 
nearly or quite as long as Paradise Lost, under the grotesque title of 
“ Whai-Cheer,’^ which was an exclamation of a party of friendly savages 
on a particular occasion, very long since. The time is some two cen¬ 
turies since ; the starting-point-fact is a case of persecution by the 
rigorous good Puritan bigots of New England, against an assertor of 
religious freedom, a man memorable and venerable in the American 
ecclesiastical history. This persecution drives him out into the wilder¬ 
ness, in the horrid snowy desolation of mid-winter, still heroically trust¬ 
ing in Providence. He goes among the savages, and his adventures 
with them, and the strange wild characteristic scenes and transactions 
in their society, form the eventful narrative. I hardly know what, ex¬ 
actly, to say of the poetry; but it is at least strikingly graphical, per¬ 
spicuous in detail and narrative, and in a plain, unaffected language, a 
little of the antiquish, and perfectly suitable to the subject. It is founded, 
in part, on the actual recorded history of the hero; and, as to the general 
character of the exhibition, seems a faithful picture of the then manners, 
customs, and notions of the Aborigines. I dare say there can have 
been no notice of such a production in the Eclectic, or probably any 
other of our Reviews. And I think a moderate article of considerable 
interest and curiosity might be made of it. With your leave I will 

try. 


CCX. TO THE REV. THOMAS COLES. 

August 3, 1838. 

.It gives me very special pleasure to hear of the very favorable 
state and prospects of your situation ; not the less so, of course, that I 
have always wished that you might find good reason to decide against 
transferring your public services from where they had been patiently 
prosecuted so long. It is highly gratifying, that in what may be called 
the autumn of your life and ministry, a kind of spring season should 
return in the congregation, in the growing up of a youthful race in a 
disposition of mind, as to many of them, so pleasing and hopeful. I 
will hope, that in this you will find, in no small degree, a reward of your 
patient perseverance through years of less pleasing experience, through 
various discouragements and vexations. 






LETTERS. 


213 


You are reported in a high state of health, promising, I liope, a long 
postponement of the infirmities of declining age. How long would you 
wish to live, if the term were supposed to be placed at your choice ? 
If the Power, who has the disposal, might be supposed to put before you 
a succession of figures, 70, 76, 80, 85, 90—and say—“ Choose, and it 
shall be so,” unconditionally as to what should be the attendant circum¬ 
stances of each term, that being left in total uncertainty as to your know’- 
ledge—w^ould you be greatly perplexed ? would it take you a long time 
and hesitation to decide on which of the numbers you should place your 
finger, that act, that single touch being an absolute, irrevocable decision ? 
One is often reproachfully reminded, that with our confident belief of the 
grand superiority of another life and scene, if w^e had the full, deliberate 
consciousness of a due preparation for it, there would require an effort, a 
repressive effort tf submission to the divine disposal, to prevent an ever- 
rising impatience of the soul to escape from this dark and sinful world, 
and go out on the sublime adventure. 

You now stand, as it were, between two equal divisions of your 
family, three of them remaining on earth, and three, you feel assured, in 
the enjoyment of a hc*ppier existence elsewhere. You have thus a social 
and family relationship, in equal proportions, with two different provinces 
of the great kingdom. 


CCXI. TO DR. STENSON. 


1838. 

We must acknowledge, my dear sir, that it is well there should be a 
sanguine spirit in the enterprises for reforming the world. Enthusiasm is 
as necessary as any other element. A cool, strict, cautious calculation, 
w^ould never give impulse enough. How many things have been effected, 
w'hich anything short of this enthusiasm would have deemed it folly to 
attempt. Think of Luther! I have lately read, with much interest, 
part of a recent French work, “ Memoirs of Luther, written by him¬ 
self.”* The title is verified by the plan, which is that of selecting and 
putcing in orderly series, the great numbers of passages in Luther’s 
books, letters, &.c., which relate personally to himself, with only some¬ 
times a few sentences by the editor to link them together. The effect 
of the work is that while the great reformer stands forth, in all his energy 
and intrepidity, there is manifested a sensibility, a softness and tender¬ 
ness of feeling, which one would not have expected in so lion-like a 
piece of humanity. Who would have imagined him looking, with a 
gentle emotion, at a little bird in a tree ? The good and noble fellow 
was sometimes, even after he was become so publicly conspicuous, so 

* M^moires de Luther, Merits par lui-niem^ ; traduits et mis en ordre 
par M. Michelet, professeur d Vicole normale, chef de la section his^ 
torique aux archives du royaume. 




214 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


poor that he could not afford himself a new coat, and tells how he was 
forced to pawn a silver goblet, which he happened to possess by inherit¬ 
ance, as his only article of value. When far on in his life and victorious 
success, his spirit sometimes drooped quite into melancholy at sight of 
the perversities, tire refractoriness, the jars, the counteractions, and self- 
interested competitions, which arose among even the reformers. 


1 



LETTER TO MR. GREAVES. 


215 


CHAPTER IX. 

LAST REVIEW-LETTER TO MR. GREAVES-VISIT TO BOURTON IN 

1840 -DEATH OF MR. COLES-VISIT TO LONDON IN 1841 - 

ILLNESS-LAST VISIT TO BOURTON IN 1842 -THE CHARTISTS 

AND THE ANTI-CORN-LAW LEAGUE-NATIONAL EDUCATION- 

LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH. 

1839—1843. 

Mr. Foster closed his literary labors by an article on Polack’s 
New Zealand^ which appeared in the Eclectic Review for July, 
1839. 

In a letter to Mr. Greaves* (April 25, 1840), to whom during 
his residence at Brearley he had stood in the twofold relation of 
friend and pupil, he reviews the circumstances of their early ac¬ 
quaintance and course in after-life. “ What a width of time it is' 
to look back over !—approaching to half a century. How far 
those youthful interests, those social scenes, those amicable collo¬ 
quies, those little adventures, have receded away ! How many 
with whom we were habitually or occasionally associated, have 
vanished from the world ! How changed are we ourselves from 
what we were then ! And then the reflection, not the less strik¬ 
ing for being too self-evident almost to be put in words, that all 
these—can return no more ! 

“ It would be interesting to me to have a long, quiet compari¬ 
son and intercommunication with you, of our respective and mu¬ 
tual remembrances, seated alone by the nightly fire-side. Some 
of these recollections would be simply those of fact; some would 

* William Greaves, Esq., who subsequently removed to Clapham, where 
he died in the same week with Mr. Foster, was in early life classical 
tutor at Brearley, an office for which he was admirably fitted, both by his 
attainments as a scholar, and by all the higher moral qualifications required 
in an instructor of youth. “ He was a singularly amiable man, full of be¬ 
nevolence and kind consideration for the wants and feelings of others. His 
heart was formed for friendship, and he had an acute discernment of what 
w'as proper in human conduct and the various relations of life. His taste 
was formed on the best models, and though not an author himself, he was 
ever ready to undertake all kinds of useful offices for his literary friends ” 


216 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


be invested with grave and pensive sentiment. And they would 
have the interest of being exclusive to ourselves, as the solitary 
occupants, so to speak, of a departed and far back tract of time; 
belonging to a period which none around us belonged to ; the 
-survivors of those who shared its interests with us, but share them 
DO more. We should be something like two men left on a soli¬ 
tary shore by a wreck in which their companions had perished. 
We should feel to belong to the race who were then our co-evals, 
whatever subsequent interests and relations we have been involved 
in. You can in mere memory go back to those times and scenes, 
but can you recall the order of ideas and feelings in such man¬ 
ner as to reanimate them, as it were, for a transitory moment, so 
as to have a lively sense of what they were ? For myself, I 
have very long lost any such power. A great difference will 
have been made in your case from mine, as to the continuity and 
prolongation of interest in the scene of our early life and its in¬ 
habitants, by your practice of rather frequently revisiting it. It 
is not, as to me, like an insulated territory, with a wide waste of 
sea between. Your disconnection from the social economy there 
(I mean our early associates) has been gradual, by the successive 
decease of one and another. And perhaps, in some certain de¬ 
gree they were replaced to you by those not of the primeval age. 
Whereas I have been nearly forty years (!) withdrawn totally 
from personal communication. I cannot exactly tell how it came 
to be so. My parents survived a considerable number of years 
after the time that I saw them last. But besides the immediate 
circumstances of my remote local situations, I felt a strong recoil 
at the thought of going to see them for absolutely a last time. I 
knew they were surrounded by kind friends, and sent them a 
little pecuniary assistance. 1 confess also that I feared lest I 
should witness a painfully sensible decline of mental faculties. I 
heard of the decease of one and another of the plain worthy per¬ 
sons (the Greenwoods, for instance, whom you will remember) to 
whom I had been partial. For our co-eval friend Fawcett, I felt 
invariably a most genuine esteem and regard. But progressive 
years were still bringing additional circumstances to diminish.the 
inducements to a revisit of the place of my nativity. And always 
the thought that such a visit would be made with the conscious¬ 
ness it was to be the last. I may add, a great aversion to long 
tedious travelling; and also, that during a very considerable 
portion of the long period, I could ill spare the expense. 


LETTER TO MR. GREAVES. 


217 


Probably neither of our lives since that reuiote period of sepa¬ 
ration would furnish a long, varied, eventful history. It is strange 
to think how short a record would suffice for my seventy years, 
though a sojourn in a considerable variety of situations. Great, 
and marked changes for the better would be the gratifying thing 
to tell of; but one’s self one’s very self, is so sadly the same in 
every place, and through every stage ;—the greater reproach as 
Providence has been faithfully kind. With some minor deduc¬ 
tions I have been highly hivored in respect to health, in point at 
least of exemption from painful and oppressive disorders; having 
never been confined one day to my bed in half a century, and 
having never in my life suffered from the headache. My eyes, 
indeed, have iiardly been in a sound condition during the last 
forty years, but never so as to be long disabled for their valuable 
function, with the aid, for many years past, of strongly magnify¬ 
ing spectacles. I am, however, not without apprehension that 
their service cannot last with any long protraction of life., . , . . 
In one point our experience lias been parallel ; each has pos¬ 
sessed, through a long course of years, the blessing of an Estima¬ 
ble and affectionate wife ; and many years since each has lost it. 
But think what they have attained and enjoyed since they left 
us! Would we, if we might, recall them from their hi^ppy 
abodes? I have the same consolation respecting a son, who 
withered away when near the age of maturity, years before ihe 
decease of his mother. Your Mary’s amiable descendant, nbw 

branching out into-how many ?—will contribute much,\ I 

have no doubt, to cheer your evening of life. To me are left 

two daughters.Though within three miles of our great 

town, we live in extreme seclusion ; having very few acquaint¬ 
ance, and almost nothing of what may be called visiting compa¬ 
ny, either here or in the town. I have long felt, and every year 
more, of disinclination to mixed society ; and of the very diminu¬ 
tive number of more select individuals whom it was a pleasure to 
see, no less than three, of my own, or even a more advanced age, 
have died within less than the last year and a half; so fast and 
urgently are admonitions repeated ; in addition and enforcement 
to those brought within the last two or three years in the very 
palpable signs and infirmities of old age. It is very far from 
likely that I am appointed (and how should it be desirable ?) to 
make any near approach, I do not say to my father’s age, of 
nearly ninety—but even my mother’s—past eighty. 





218 


LIFE OF JOHN TOSTEK. 


“ On my already long life I look back with little complacency 
(except as to the goodness of divine Providence), rather, with 
heavy condemnation.* Comparatively with what it might and 
should have been, it has been an indolent and profitless life,—of 
extremely slight intellectual discipline, very defective cultivation 
and advance of personal piety, and little faitliful exertion to do 
good—a most powerful antidote to all pharisaism ; from which, 
indeed, I do think I am wholly clear—and strange if I were not. 
But for that blessed refuge in the atonement of our Mediator I 
should be in utter despair. But iliat, Heaven be praised, is all- 
sufficient and alone. 

“ I named ‘ intellectual discipline I should be ashamed to 
write such a word as study j anything that ought to have an¬ 
swered to that name, has been, to the last degree, shallow and 
desultory. Not for want of copious aids, which should also have 
been excitements. For I have most foolishly accumulated books, 
to the amount of several thousand volumes, some of them of a 
costly order, and, collectively taken, at an expense which, with 
such limited means, I had no business to afford, and did not afford 
without often trenching on much more useful and necessary ex- 
penditures. And it would be most mortifying to me if, besides, I 
were to hear a true voice telling me how many of these same vol¬ 
umes have been wholly unread. 

.My memory, never good, has become so miserably 

faithless that reading is of little use to me. Do you keep up your 
taste and habits in that way ? 

“ My political and anti-hierarchical feelings and opinions have 
been but little modified by age. And their abatement is little likely 
to be a consequence of the present glaring manifestation of aristo¬ 
cratic arrogance and high-church intolerance. I meet with no 
thoughtful man who does not apprehend that the course of national 
affairs will after a while be precipitated to some fearful extremity 
or catastrophe. 

“ But, my dear friend, let me not seem to forget, that this is a 
communication between two persons who will soon have done 

* “ Much as I am condemning men and mankind, I do really think that 
a larger portion of accusatory thought is directed on the evil at home than 
on that of all the rest of the world put together. Very often I am amazed 
and confounded to think how I can have lived so long to make such mise¬ 
rable attainments in plain, vital, practical Christianity, and to think how 
grievously, prodigiously difficult it is to subdue, or even reduce, any one, 
great or small, of the evil principles of this our evil nature.”— Mr. Foster 
to Dr, Stenson. 



BOURTON. 


219 


with sublunary concerns. You are, I think, two or three years 
in advance of me. Both approaching the extreme verge. A few 
years more at the utmost, and where shall we be ? Oh may our 
dwelling and our meeting be in a far better and happier economy ; 
where already so many of our dear departed friends are exulting 
in a final, eternal escape from all evil; to which contemplative 

thought often tries to follow them.But suffice it, that the)/ 

are happy, and that we are invited to go and see, and to mingle 
our happiness with theirs. Earnest, assiduous preparation, then, 
is the solemn concern of this concluding portion of our life.’’ 

In the summer of 1840 Mr. Foster visited his friends at Bour- 
ton. Writing to Mr. Hill (June 30), he says, “ There is nothing 
to tell you of here. I am in a most worthy and friendly family, 
and have been met with marks of pleasure by the remaining few 
of the good people with whom I was acquainted or intimate in a 
period of residence which ended something more than twenty years 
since ! How few they are, and how changed in appearance ! 
And doubtless I appear to them changed no less. I am not, I 
hope, unthankful to the good Providence that was indulgent to me 
when here, and has not deserted me during the long course of 
years since and elsewhere. But a review of my life—of myself 
—back through all these years, brings bitter reflections on the 
wretched deficiencies, neglects, and vanities, of a life that might 
have been [might have been !) wholly, earnestly, and delightfully 
devoted to God and Christ. My daily and almost hourly prayer 
is, • God be merciful to me a sinner !’ I do think that if there 
be any one thing that I am fully clear of, it is self-righteousness. 
I am sometimes almost afraid I shall err in praying so little 
against this, in consequence of feeling (as I think) so very abso¬ 
lute an extirpation of it from my mind.” 

In another letter to the same friend (July 9) he says, “ I look 
with pensive, and not a little of painful emotion at the rooms I 
frequented, the house I inhabited, the rural walks which I trod, 
during a course of many years, since the end of which a much 
longer series has passed away. It was here I formed, and for a 
long time had the happiness of an union now many years since 
dissolved. But the pain of a more austere kind than that of pen¬ 
siveness is from the reflection, to how little purpose, of the highest 
order, the long years here, and subsequently elsewhere, have 
been consumed away—how little sedulous and earnest cultivation 
of internal piety—how little even mental improvement—how little* 



220 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of zealous devotement to God and Christ, and the best cause. 
Oh it is a grievous and sad reflection, and drives me to the great 
and only resource, to say, ‘ God be merciful to me a sinner.’ I 
also most earnestly implore that in one way or otlier, what may 
remain of my life may be better, far better, than the long-pro¬ 
tracted past. ‘ Past !’ What a solemn and almost tremendous 
word it is, when pronounced in the reference in which I am re¬ 
peating it! 

‘‘ After several weeks spent here, with a throwing aside of a 
cumbrous task or two which I was very desirous to work off’ my 
hands, I have the horrid business before me, as soon as there 
shall be a space of true summer weather, of going about what I 
have shrunk from, one year after another, all the while knowing 
it to be necessary, of making something like a clear reformation 
of my part of the house, whieh is infested with the dust, damp, 
book-worms, and chaos of all sorts of accumulation, of jumbled 

valuables and rubbish.I must be in superintendence of 

the business myself, taking as small a part of the hard work as I 
can help. This ugly transaction will take, even with fine 
W'eather, several weeks, and by the time it is ended I shall very 
much want to sit down motionless and quiet, and also to try 
whether I can make some little ^use of the room for its proper 
business. How it ever is to be done, I do not venture yet even _ 
to imagine. It is a hard matter of faith that it can be done at 
all.” 

On his return to Stapleton he writes (July 24), “The Augean 
business here has not yet been entered on. Besides the shrink¬ 
ing horror, the weather has been untoward from wet and cold. 
If the present apparent promise of its ‘ taking up ’ shall prove 
true, I must force myself to the resolution (you know by what 
yower), to make a beginning with the beginning of next week. 

.A few days since, as a very rare occurrence, I yielded 

to the solieitation of a curious literary acquaintance from Leices¬ 
ter, to have a look of inspection into the den, of which he said he 
had heard frightful reports, made on surmise. And though I 
assured him, in the way of preparation, that they could not, 
though made on conjecture, without actual knowledge, have ex¬ 
ceeded the truth, he appeared fairly taken aback at the spectacle, 
and muttered, ‘ This is chaos indeed !’ ” 

Though all the assistance was given to Mr. Foster which he 
would allow, in this troublesome and fatiguing business, the ex- 




DEATH OF MR. COLES. 


221 


ertions he made, together with the extreme sultriness of the sea¬ 
son, obliged him for a time to remit it ; and when accomplished, 
he found it necessary to have recourse to medical aid. It in¬ 
creased a morbid affection which he had experienced for the last 
two or three months, a kind of habitual dull heaviness, which 
was more annoying, and excited more app“rehension, from his 
having been absolutely free from common headache during all 
his previous life ; a circumstance rather remarkable in one whose 
time had been so devoted to literary labor, and who, in other 
ways, very sensibly felt the effects of it on his bodily frame. 

Not long after his return home, he received the unexpected intel¬ 
ligence of the decease of his valued friend, the Rev. Thomas 
Coles, after a very short illness. “ The sad event,” he says,* 
“ comes with such a surprise that one seems hardly able to be¬ 
lieve it a reality. To think how I*saw him, evening after eve¬ 
ning, but a few short weeks since ! betraying no signs of the 
infirmities of age ; vigorous, animated, and in various activity ; 
a man for whom one was pleased to predict a physical and mental 
competence for his work, for towards twenty years to come. How 
strange and striking if, the last morning of being with him, at his 
cheerful breakfast, some secret prophetic intimation had come 
into my mind, that by the time I am now* writing he would be 
silent, insensible, and waiting but a few hours to be conveyed to 
the grave ! What a change it would have brought in the silent 
consciousness of the mind, over every look, and sentence, and 
tone of his voice ! . . . . To-morrow the pulpit will be beheld 
with a kind of dubious wandering sentiment, that will say, ‘ Will 
he really be seen there no more ? Have there proceeded thence 
his final address and final prayer ? Will every voice now to be 
heard there, be a memento that his, which has been heard these 
forty years, is now for ever silent, when there seemed every 
probability that it would continue to be heard, through many 
years to come, in which many of his hearers would be withdrawn 
from the congregation and from the living world, leaving him 
still in the exercise of his ministration 

“ . . . . Mr. Coles was insinuating me a half request to be 
there [Bourton] at this very day, for the missionary meeting. 
What an astounding thing it would have been had there been any 
inspired seer to say, ‘ Mr. Coles, you will, at that time, be in an 
assembly elsewhere.^ ” 


To Dr. Stenson, Sept, 1840, 



222 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


In the summer of 1841 Mr. Foster spent several weeks with 
Mr. (now Sir John) Easthope and his family ; part of the time 
was passed in the Isle of Wight. 

In a letter dated July 17, he says, referring to his journey 
from Southampton, “ A gentleman on the railway mentioned some 
remarkable antiquities dug up in cutting the road, and'gave di¬ 
rections for them to be shown to me, and where I should find 
them. They are various pieces of ancient British pottery, some 
of them of forms not exactly, that I remember, described by Sir 
R. Hoare. They are chiefly basins and urns, large and small: 
a large urn containing human bones and a skull. The shape of 
some of them may be called elegant. They were found not very 
deep in the earth, and where there was no sign (tumulus or the 
like) on the surface. I am always interested by these primitive, 
or call them primeval antiquities.” 

This was the last time that he visited London. He was there 
for many weeks in the spring and summer of 1836, at the house 
of the same friend ; and after his return often spoke in grateful 
terms of the kindness which he met with from every member of 
the family. On both occasions he devoted much of his time to 
the various exhibitions and works of art in the British Museum 
and elsewhere. “ There is one unpleasant, almost mischievous 
effect,” he remarks, “ of seeing so many imposing or captivating 
ideal forms of humanity,—that it creates, or rather augments, a 
repulsion to human beings such as they are actually seen. To¬ 
day, for example, in seeing the numberless multitude, as they 
were passing backward and forward, or standing in ranks, one 
glanced at their countenances with a sort of recoil from each and 
almost all; not from the mere effect of their material cast, but 
also and very strongly from the apparent expression of character, 
—even of those who were evidently not of what we mean by the 
vulgar. 

“ In seeing such vast multitudes, one is often struck with the 
thought how each one is all-important to individual self, and, in 
most instances, considerably so to some other individuals ; and 
yet how totally insignificant to all besides,—whether, or how, 
they live or die. What a consideration it is, that since I came 
hither, as many at least as three thousand have died in this city 
—all unknown and indifferent to me.” 

Near the end of December he was attacked with bronchitis, 
“ a visitation ” which, he remarked, “ came as a very strange 


LAST VISIT TO BOURTON. 


223 


one to a man who had not for fifty years been confined to bed a 
single day.” He kept his room somewhere about two months. 
He manifested, throughout, the greatest patience ; and his letters, 
written when he became convalescent, disclose how anxiously he 
sought to derive spiritual improvement from the affliction : “ 1 
hope,” he says,* ‘‘ this season of imprisonment has not been 
without a real advantage in respect to the highest concern. It , 
has brought with it many grave, earnest, and painful reflections. 
The review of life has been solemnly condemnatory—such a sad 
deficiency of the vitality of religion, the devotional spirit, the love, 
the zeal, the fidelity of conscience. I have been really amazed 
to think how I could—I do not say, have been conte.nt with such 
a low and almost equivocal piety, for 1 never have been at all 
content—but, how I could have endured it, without my whole 
soul rising up against it, and calling vehemently on the almighty 
Helper to come to my rescue, and never ceasing till the blessed 
experience was attained. And then the sad burden of accumu¬ 
lated guilt! and the solemn future ! and life so near the end ! 
Oh what dark despair but for that blessed light that shines from 
the Prince of Life, the only and the all-sufficient Deliverer from 
the second death. I have prayed earnestly for a genuine peni¬ 
tential, living faith on Him. Do you pray for me. Thus I hope 
this temporary experience of suspended health will have a salu¬ 
tary effect on the souVs health. I do not mean that these exer¬ 
cises of mind are a new thing, brought on by this visitation. 
They have grown upon me in this late declining stage of life. 
But for everything that enforces and augments them I have cause 
to be thankful. There is much work yet to be done in this most 
unworthy soul ; my sole reliance is on divine assistance ; and I 
do hope and earnestly trust (trust in that assistance itself) that 
every day I may yet have to stay on earth, will be employed as 
part of a period of persevering, and I almost say jJassionate, peti- 
tions for the divine mercy in Christ, and so continue to the last 

day and hour of life, if consciousness be then granted. 

Often I am making humbling comparisons between my lot, and 
that of the many ten thousand who are suffering at this time all 
the miseries of hopeless destitution. Why am I so favored, and 
millions so wretched ?” . . . . 

Mr. Foster went to Bourton, for the last time, in the middle of 
September, 1842. He stayed about six weeks, and returned, 

* To the Rev. Josiah Hill, February, 1842. 




224 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


looking rather stouter and apparently somewhat invigo;rated. Ho 
seemed to have enjoyed his visit very much,—to have been gra¬ 
tified by the cordial hospitality and kindness of his relations and 
old acquaintance, and to have felt much interest in wandering 
about his old haunts. In writing, while there, to one of his 
nephews, he thus adverts to the state of public affairs: “ I sup¬ 
pose,”* he says, “ you have the pestilent Chartists in your part of 
the country. They are a very stupid and pernicious set; some 
of their leaders great rogues ; the whole tribe a sad nuisance. 
They have done what they could to frustrate the exertions for ob¬ 
taining the only public benefit which there is the smallest chance 
of getting at present, or for a long time to come ; that is, an altera¬ 
tion or abrogation of the Corn laws, a thing which would imme¬ 
diately be a most important relief to that commercial interest on 
which so many tens of thousands are depending. And while they 
are doing this mischief, they are brawling about unwersal suffrage, 
a thing as much out of reach for a very long time to come, as 
anything they could dream of. And yet, unless they can get this, 
they say they will accept no other cliange for the amendment of 
their condition. What fools! And to judge of their recent pro- 
ceedings, they are themselves wholly unfit for such a suffrage. 
What a fine and valuable thing the suffrage would be to men 
whose chosen business it has been to go and disturb, and break 
up with noise and violence, and abuse, the important meetings for 
discussing the best expedients for alleviating the public distress !— 
No, no ; they have yet a great deal to learn before they will be 
fit for a considerate and judicious voting for members of the legis¬ 
lature, 1 wish the people had the Universal Suffrage, provided 
they were better educated, more intelligent, more sober, more 
moral; but not in their present state of ignoranee and rudeness. 
Their being so, is, as to some of them, their own fault. But the 
main weight of the reproach falls on the government and the 
church, which have left the people in this deplorable condition 
from generation to generation. There ought to have been, long 
since, a general national education, whicli would have made sure 
of all being educated, in some decent measure,—as is the case in 
Prussia and some parts of Germany. But high statesmen and 
high churchmen have never, till a little lately, given themselves 
any concern about the matter. 

“ A sojourn in this village brings back many remembrances- 
* To Mr. John Foster, September 22, 1S42. 


CHARTISTS. 


225 


What a cnange of the inhabitants ! All the then old people van¬ 
ished, and those who were in the vigor of middle life now wither¬ 
ing into age,—and myself as much so as any of them. If I observe 
some of them stooping as they walk, my attention instantly turns 
on myself, and I perceive that I do so too, especially since the 
long and weakening disorder, which last winter confined me many 
weeks to my chamber, and several weeks to my bed. Within and 
without are the admonitions that life is hastening to a close. I 
endeavor to feel and live in conformity to this admonition ; greatly 
dissatisfied with myself and my past life, and having and seeking 
no ground of hope for hereafter, but solely the all-sufficient merits 
and atonement of our Lord and Saviour. If that great cause of 
faith and hope were taken away, I should have nothing left.” 

In another letter, of rather later date, he refers again to the 
same topics. “ It must have been a most harassing time for you 
all,” he says,* “ when you had those late tumults about you. The 
tumults and outrages will subside, from the conviction and expe¬ 
rience that no good can come of them, but much evil, aggravating 
the evil there was already. But though the violence will be put 
down, the spirit, the resentment, and the sense of oppression and 
injustice, in the state of the people, must remain, and increase, till 
some great change shall come at length, but not soon. One is 
astonished at the stockish stupidity of those Chartists, if they 
really did and do dream of obtaining what they demand in their 
charter. It is impossible but some of the bad men who have been 
exciting them, and making their own base advantage of them, 
must know better. Till the times, the nation, and themselves 
shall have vastly changed, they might as well think of going to 
the moon. They have greatly damaged the whole cause of re¬ 
form, by setting the middle as well as the higher ranks more 
against them than they were before. Nothing could be more mad 
and mischievous than their proceedings respecting the great ques¬ 
tion of the corn laws. Besides the extravagance of some of their 
demands, their irreligious and profligate character has made them 
detested, and would make them feared if they had any real power. 
As to their power, do they not see how impotent they would be, 
whatever were their numbers, against a large disciplined military 
force, of which fifty thousand would soon be brought into action , 
if there were any occasion for it ? There is no chance for the 


VOL. II. 


* To Mr. John Foster, October 1,1S42. 

16 


226 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


^popular rights,'’ till the people become better educated and more 
morally respectable. And I fear tlieir chance for better education 
is but small, since the aristocracy and the church have very .little 
disposition to promote that important object.” 

About Christmas, Mr. Foster had one or two attacks of spit¬ 
ting of blood, and again about the middle of January, 1843. 
These attacks did not confine him at all to his bed or to his room, 
but obliged him to be very careful, and to remain in the house for 
many weeks. As the milder weather came on, he ventured out 
again, and did not seem in a very perceptibly different state from 
what he had been in during the previous summer. He was some¬ 
what thinner and more languid—less disposed and less able to 
move about. His cough also was often very troublesome. 

He continued to manifest a deep interest in public affairs, espe¬ 
cially the great question of national education ; so intense was 
his anxiety that some measure should be taken to raise the mass 
of the people, that he would have acquiesced in a measure that 
would have substantially effected this object, even though accom- 
panied with restrictions inconsistent with what he deemed a just 
and enlightened policy. “ As to the education project,” he says,* 
“ the probability seems to be that it will wholly fall to the ground, 
so that our rising race of savages and pagans will continue to grow 
up in the hideous condition which has been so frightfully brought 
to view. For the almost universal remonstrance of the Noncon¬ 
formists must have a great effect to deter the ministry from per¬ 
sisting in the bill as it stands ; and there is small chance that the 
church arrogance will permit any conciliatory modification. 
Horrid bad either w^ay; on the one hand, indefinitely prolonged 
and increasing barbarism, and on the other, the hateful and in¬ 
tolerable domination of the established church. The Methodist 
folk are going too far, in declaring against the bill absolutely and 
altogether, whereas the case is so alarmingly urgent, that if such 
modifications as those proposed by Lord J. Russell, or even the 
most material part of them, were admitted, one would, however 
reluctantly, and witli a feeling of submitting to some injustice, 
make considerable concessions, in order that the wretched popu¬ 
lace might have a certainty of getting some good in the way of. 
cultivation, rather than be consigned, downright and hopelessly, 
to the great pestilent swamp of ignorance and barbarism. What 
a tale is told of our opulent and powerful church and state by the 

* To the Rev. Josiah'Hill, April 21, 1843. 


BRISTOL COLLEGE. 


227 


present mental and moral condition of the million ! What a fear¬ 
ful account elsewhere they—that is, the persons and classes of 
chief authority and ability—have gone to render. One sometimes 
feels the rising of an impatient indignation which is ready to 
transgress the great law of piety, by asking, in a temper which 
requires to be repressed, ‘ Why does the supreme Governor per- 
mit such a course of things V ” 

Mr. Foster regarded very favorably the Prussian system of 
education ; and on its being represented to him by a friend that 
from the accounts of Mr. Laing and others, it appeared that the 
plan was open to grave objections—that the restrictions imposed 
by it on the individual will, checked the generous growth of the 
moral sentiments, and induced laxity in the domestic relations— 
he manifested surprise and disappointment.* 

The last time of his appearing on any public occasion was in 
June, 1843, at the annual meeting of the Bristol Baptist College, 
when he attended, as he had been wont for many preceding years, 
the theological examination. This proof of his undiminished 
attachment to the Institution was entirely spontaneous, for, much as 
his presence on these occasions was valued, the failing state of 
his health quite forbade the expectation of being favored with it. 
During the period of his final residence in the neighborhood of 
Bristol, he had been a member of the Committee, and had taken 
the most lively interest in its transactions; particularly on any 
important emergencies, as at the decease of the president Dr. Ry- 
land, in 1825, when arrangements were made for a more efficient 
system of education, in order to meet the general progress of 
society and the exigencies of the denomination. In 1823, he wrote 
an address on behalf of the College, and furnished the most im¬ 
portant paragraphs in the annual reports for 1826 and 1838.f 

* Vide Notes of a Traveller on the Social and Political State of France, 
Russia, Switzerland, Italy, and other parts of Europe, during the present 
century, by Samuel Laing, Esq., 2d edit., 1842, ch. 6, 7, and 8. 

f “ We may presume that not many persons in our denomination to whom 
we might apply, would plainly say they do not wish the Institution to be 
supported and prosperous ; that they do not care what its situation may 
be. . . . Nor will they say they are indifferent as to the intellectual quali¬ 
fications of the men who are to be public instructors ; that an illiterate or 
slenderly cultivated preacher will do as well, provided he possess piety 
and zeal, as another, who shall combine with these essential qualifications 
the advantage of a mind regularly disciplined to the exercise of thinking, 
and the acquirement of valuable knowledge. We sometimes hear them say¬ 
ing, with respect to one or other of the less cultivated preachers (whose 
labors, however, when their situation has denied them the time and means 
for adequately supplying the deficiency, we do not undervalue) ‘ what an 


228 


LIFE OF JOHiN FOSTER. 


I'owards September all the unfavorable symptoms became much 
aggravated. “The three years that 1 am in advance of you,” he 
writes to Mr. Hill (Aug. 31), have brouglit on me the most urgent 
mementos of mortality. Within less than two years, two very 
protracted seasons of very great prostration, resulting in a settled 

excellent preacher he would have been, if he had enjoyed the advantage of 
a good education !’ They profess to be sorry for the difference between 
what he is, and what he might have been ; between the measure of good he 
is able to do now, and that which he might have effected if competently 
trained. And will they refuse the necessary means of obviating just that 
difference in the case of young m.en of piety and promising ability, willing 
to devote themselves to the service ? 

“ While solicitous to have their children well educated, they would deem 
it absolutely a calamity that their families should grow up in attendance on 
a ministry unqualified to convey religious instruction in a manner that 
should command respect; unadapted to enlighten, convince, and persuade. 
How would they like to have the task, after each service, of pleading, to the 
sharper of their young people (whose first essays of criticism are sure to 
have the preacher for the subject) for candor to his literary and mental de¬ 
ficiencies; of excusing the inaccuracies of his language, helping out the 
lameness of his argument; and urging (alas ! vainly urging) that religion is 
not the less true and important for the incompetence of its advocate ? And 
surely they would wish that families everywhere should be saved from an 
evil which they would so deprecate for their own. 

“ But the pleading is not the less valid, if we turn from this supposed 
order of hearers to the very uncultivated portion which must make a large 
part of most of our congregations; and which it is in the highest degree de¬ 
sirable to draw thither in increasing numbers. Ah mistake is more gross 
than that of imagming that undisciplined teachers are the fittest to deal 
with ignorance and mental rudeness. On the contrary, to force the rays 
of thought intelligibly through so opaque a medium, demands peculiarly 
and emphatically a great clearness and prominence of thinking, and an 
exact feeling of the effect of words, as to be chosen, combined, and varied. 

“ The character of the age we live in is a frequent topic of our discourse. 
We are all saying. What a wonderful movement in the general mind; what 
an awakened start from the monotony of our forefathers’ life ; what an 
amazing development of the powers of science to wield the powers of na¬ 
ture ; what an impetus and acceleration of human action ; what a creation 
of means for the diffusion of knowledge; what signs, surely, of some grand 
approaching change ! We look on this great improvement and exclaim, 
taking credit for pious zeal while we are exclaiming, ‘ Oh that the cause of 
Religion were, through every section of it, in equally energetic forward im¬ 
pulse in our land !’ But there should be some voice at hand, to name to us 
a certain article, which is supplied in immense profusion to empower (hose 
other mighty agencies; and but for which the bold experiments, the 
engines, the railroads, the improved processes, the compelling of rude sub¬ 
stances to valuable uses, the printing presses, the myriads of laborers, 
would be all at a stand. 

“To this suggestion will the man who was professing his desire for the 
accelerated progress of the Christian agency reply, that those other enter¬ 
prises have the captivating recommendation, that the expenditure of money 
is expected to return in naoney to the expenders ; whereas, in a case like 
ours, unfortunately, the expenditure would give no return other than that 
of some time, in some degree, making some men wiser, better, and happier ? 
Is it an insignificant promise, ‘ Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrec¬ 
tion of the just i” ”— Report, 1833. 


LAST ILLNESS. 


229 


debility, which will continue through whatever remains of life. ] 
haye the great grievance of a cough, of an anomalous kind, having 
apparently nothing to do with the chest, but caused by a local irrb 
tatjon somewhere at the bottom of the throat. No medicaments 
take any effect on it. Of a dozen things tried, laudanum is the 
only one to which it yields. An unwelcome resource, which I use 
as sparingly as I can; for I feel it has an unpleasant effect on 
the head.” 

, In his last letter to the same friend, of rather later date (Sept. 
18), he says, “ This is a grand missionary week in our town \ of 
which I shall not see a particle, or hear a sentence. I shall not 
be called on by any of them ; it being understood that I cannot 
work a conversation^^ talking being sure to irritate a very injurious 
cough. On this account, last evening, I sent away witliout seeing 
him the person whom, at all times, I am more pleased to see than 
any one else from the town. I fancy some little abatement of the 
extreme debility. Any material amendment will be slow ; as to 
recovery^ in any moderate or ordinary sense of the word, I never 
think of it. It may be that life may last on two or three linger¬ 
ing years ; as the constitution, radically, is of the sounder order, 
and very sound till within the last two years. But my business 
is, to be looking habitually to the end, and making all serious pre¬ 
paration fpr it, under such constant strong admonition. In con¬ 
sidering, a day or two since, the balance of good and evil of this 
last year and more, I hoped I could say, I am a gainer by the salu¬ 
tary effects I hope I have reaped from this discipline. I never 

* “ Work a conversation” This expression may be illustrated by an 
extract from a letter to Mr. Hill, written about 1819—“ You mentioned 
some expectation of seeing B— in Wales. Now in good truth, my dear sir, 
if I knew at what time, I would make some arrangement or other that 
should authorize me to say that I could not possibly visit you at that time. 
In my present state of debility, I feel an absolute horror of the necessity of 
long laborious such as would be inevitable to a constant association 

with a man like him—a thorough college man, hard disciplined, doggedly 
literary, and nearly a stranger. One day of it (I know by experience) 
would do me more mischief than a week’s idleness would undo. With you 
the case is quite different;—we are old acquaintances,—there is no obliga¬ 
tion of ceremony,—we can talk just about what we like,—read Walter 
Scott,—be under no necessity of mental exertion, but just as far as we find 
it agreeable,—debate with the young ones,—ramble hither and thither (that 
is, w’hen you are not engaged),—in short, be always at our ease ; anything 
more formal, more laborious, and more continued than this, miserably jades 
me. It would be as bad as having to preach every day. I admire B—’s 
intelligence and attainments, but his being such, unless he were an old fa¬ 
miliar, would render prolonged conversation with him a kind of college 
exercise, of which, to repeat the word, my state of health gives me the 
utmost horror.” 


230 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


prayed more earnestly, nor probably with such faithful frequenc 3 ^ 
‘ Pray without ceasing ’ lias been the sentence repeating itself in 
the silent thought; and I am sure, I think, that it will, that it 
must, be my practice to the last conscious hour of life. Oh ! 
why not throughout that long, indolent, inanimate half-century 
post! I often think mournfully of the difference it would have 
made now, when there remains so little time for a more genuine, 
effective, spiritual life. What would become of a poor sinful soul, 
but for that blessed, all-comprehensive sacrifice, and that interces¬ 
sion at the right hand of the Majesty on high ?” 

On the 24th of September he took to his room, which he never 
again left. There exists no doubt that his lungs had been dis¬ 
eased for many years. With very rare and slight exceptions, he 
betrayed none of the irritability so generally attendant upon the 
disease. The religious remarks and admonitions .addressed to 
those around him were deeply interesting and affecting; but it 
was not often that his cough and extreme weakness allowed him 
to say much. On one occasion, however, he spoke at great 
length on “ the duty of earnest, persevering, importunate prayer 
and at another time, on the absolute necessity of casting ourselves 
on the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, concluding in the following 
M^ords: “We can do nothing in our own strength ; we must look 
to Jesus—our only Mediator—our only Redeemer—our only 
hope.” But no exhortations could have been half so impressive 
as the uniform patience he displayed, and the self-condemnatory 
remarks he often made, indicating a profound feeling of the evil 
of sin. 

One evening, when he appeared very much exhausted, it was 
remarked, “ You are very languid to-night.” “ Yes,” he replied, 
“ I shall languish out of this mortal life some time not long hence.” 
On being told of the frequent kind inquiries made for him by 
friends in the neighborhood, he said, “ To all inquiries it’s always 
the same answer, and the last will be the best of all.” On the 
sabbath previous to his death, while a friend was reading to him 
one of Doddridge’s Sermons, he fell asleep ; on awaking, he said 
in a tone very expressive of a grateful feeling, “ ’Tis a thankless 
office to read to sleepy people.” 

In the earlier stages of his illness he was very much in the 
habit of speaking of the value of time, and sometimes quoted 
Young’s lines on the subject. Another frequent topic of conver¬ 
sation was the separate state. After the death of any friend, he 


LAST ILLNESS. 


231 


seemed impatient to be made acquainted with the secrets of the 
invisible world.* On one occasion of this kind (rather more than 
a twelvemonth before his own decease), he exclaimed, “ They 
don’t come back to tell us!” and then, after a short silence, em- 
phatically striking his hand upon the table, he added, with a look 
of intense seriousness, “But we shall know some time!” 

He sat up for a few hours almost daily till the day before his 
death. Towards the latter part of the time he often expressed a 
wish to be left alone fora little while, saying, that there was much 
he ought to think of, and that in a state of great debility it was a 
difficult thing to think. 

During the whole course of his illness he showed the greatest 
consideration for the servants and all about him, and was as 
anxious to give them as little trouble as possible. He never 
allowed any one to sit up, even for part of the night—he would 
not listen to such a proposal, and when urged would say, that it 
would so annoy him as to prevent his sleeping. 

Speaking of liis weakness to one of his two servants who had 
lived with him for about thirty years, he mentioned some things 
which he had not strength to perform; and then added, “ But I 
can pray, and that is a glorious thing.” On another occasion he 
said to his attendant, “ Trust in Christ—trust in Christ.” At 
another time, the servant heard him repeating to himself the words, 
“ O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ? 
Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord 
Jesus Christ.” 

On October 3d he wrote to Sir J. Easthope, and stated that he 
had no expectation of surviving more than a very few months, but 
though he felt unequal to the exertion of a personal interview, he 
“ Vv^ould not yet say Farewell.” Two days later, however, his 
debility had increased so rapidly, that he limited his expectations 

* “ The nearer I approach by advancing age to the grand experiment, tho 
more inquisitive—I might almost say, restlessly inquisitive,—I become re¬ 
specting that other scene and state of our existence.The wonder is, 

after all, and the self-reproach too, there should be a difficulty to keep the 
mind in a state of earnest preparation for making, as our friend expressed 

it, ‘ the grand and final journey.’.Still another surprise (but truly 

the uncertainty of life, under almost any circumstances, should not surprise 
us) was caused me by the information of the decease of Mr. G.’s daughter ; 
no other, I believe, than the pleasing young lady who took my arm in walk¬ 
ing to the music-meeting at the cathedral. How little did I think of her, 
in that blooming youth, as bearing the fatal mark of an appointment to be 
so prematurely withdrawn from life. If that had been a visible mark, what 
an emotion would have been excited in looking at my companion !”— Mr. 
Foster to Mrs. Stokes, June 14, 1839. 




232 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of prolonged life to only a few days, and ended his last letter to 
the same friend with the words, “ I commend you to the God of 
mercy, and very affectionately bid you— Farewell.’’'^ 

His family were much struck by the perfect dignity and com¬ 
posure with which, as soon as he relinquished all hope of even a 
partial recovery, he resigned himself to the divine appointment. 

On Saturday, October 14, the day before his death, he com¬ 
plained of feeling some confusedness in his head, and was much 
oppressed in his breathing; he was therefore obliged to desist that 
day from his usual practice of hearing some one read to him 
and finding it very difficult to converse, he requested to be left 
quite alone during the afternoon and evening. This desire was 
complied with ; some of his family going occasionally into his 
room, but so as not to disturb him, till the usual hour of retiring 
to rest; they then particularly requested that some one might be 
allowed to sit up with him through the night. This, however, he 
steadily refused, though in consequence of a long continued fit of 
coughing he was in a state of greater exhaustion than usual. The 
kind-old servant who attended upon him, from an apprehension 
lest she should disturb him, did not go at all into his room in the 
course of that night, as she had been in the habit of doing every 
night for the past fortnight. But towards four o’clock she went 
to the door of his room to listen, and being satisfied from the sound 
' she heard that he was sleeping, returned without going in. At 
about six o’clock she went again to the door, and this time hear¬ 
ing no sound, she went in, and found that he had expired. His 
arms were gently extended, and his countenance was as tranquil 
as that of a person in a peaceful sleep. Death had taken place 
but a very short time, for only the forehead was cold. 

On the following Saturday his remains were laid in the grave, 
which just seventeen years before had been opened to receive 
those of his son, in the burial ground belonging to the chapel at 
Downend, where he formerly preached. 

* One of the last works read to him was a sermon by Dr, Doddridge, on 
“ the incapacity of an unregenerate soul for relishing the enjoyments of the 
heavenly world.” He was so much struck with this sermon that he desired 
his daughters to promise him they would read it every month, saying that 
he thought no one could read it often without a salutary effect. During the 
last two or three days of his life, the Scriptures (chiefly the Psalms) were 
by his own desire exclusively read to him. 


LETTERS. 


233 


LETTERS. 


CCXII. TO MRS. STOKES. 
fOn the death of Mr. Stokes.] 

Stapleton, Feb. 20, 1839 

My dear old Friend, —For how truly I may name you so, when I 
am looking back over a period of nearly thirty years, that have passed 
away since I was first received in your house, with all the kindness of 
yourself, and of him who was then your companion there ; and during 
which there has been a succession of times and scenes which we have 
all three happily enjoyed together. 

Within the last two months, one of these, and then another, and 
another, has been brought back in lively images to my memory, with an 
interest in which a painful sentiment has deeply mingled with that of 
pleasure. Pleasing events and experiences which are long past and 
gone, bring a pensiveness in the reflection itself that they are past and 
irrevocable. 

This feeling, however, can be somewhat relieved so long as there remain 
the possibility and the means of renewing the pleasure, and being happy 
again in the same manner from the same causes. But when the final 
withdrawment of one indispensable participator of these pleasures has 
taken away that possibility, the remembrance of them is accompanied by 
a very mournful sentiment. It is with a melancholy emotion that we 
say, “ With him I can behold those scenes, converse on those subjects, 
share the social animation—no more. Often I have in imagination 
placed myself in some delightful spot or stage in North Wales, and 
thought how I should feel if I were to be there again ; what a strong and 
mournful admonition there would be of the absence of our friend ; how 
memory would interfere to preclude the pleasure; how every object 
adapted in itself to inspire delight, would remind me of something that 
was fatally wanting. And in the more quiet situations, in the domestic 
intercourse or the social party, the silent thought (while every friend was 
contributing to the pleasure), the thought would be, “ Where is his 
intelligent and friendly countenance and animated voice ?” 

You will often have felt a momentary prompting to look at a part of 
the room, or at a chair, where he used more commonly to sit; to see the 
door opening into your apartment with a feeling as if it should be he that 
is coming in ; to look at and handle some article of his apparel, or some 
implement of his familiar use, or some favorite book, with a sentiment 
that almost says, “ Is it absolutely true that he has used this for the last 
time ?” 

Among the feelings caused by the loss of domestic friends, few things 
have in my own case been more striking than the impression of their 


234 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


absolute and entire surrender of the things that specially and individually 
belonged to them. This or that was his or hers, peculiarly and per¬ 
sonally so ; perhaps a favorite article ; but they make no claim to it now; 
it is totally yielded up; let go, absolutely and for ever ; it is now a thing 
infinitely indifferent to the person who called it “ mine it may be taken 
by any person or for any use. The late proprietor wants it no longer, 
knows it no more. 

No doubt the real principle of the pensive emotion excited by this sur¬ 
render and relinquishment is, that it tells us, in this secondary manner 
of evidence, that he has also quitted us ; has withdrawn his claims upon 
us, and has ceased to interfere with our concerns and proceedings. 

Yet it will often occur as an idea nowise irrational or improbable, that 
perhaps the loved and departed friend, in what is, as to our perceptions, 
an absence entire and absolute, may not really have become a stranger. 

I have often thought it highly probable that the departed friends who took 
a warm and faithful interest may do so still. A benevolent remembrance 
of us they necessarily have. But why not much more than that ? Why 
should it appear improbable that they have the means of being apprised 
of our situation and conduct, and even our feelings ; and that they main¬ 
tain in a continuance, a friendly interest for us; watching, as it were, 
our progress tow^ard the appointed moment of our passing after them 
through death ? Some good and wise men have even maintained it as not 
improbable that they may be employed in kind offices for their pious 
survivors, in humbler co-operation with angelic agents. We cannot 
know it; but w’e may be allowed to indulge a pleasing and consolatory 
idea wffiich contradicts no principle of reason and doctrine of revelation. 
At the very least we may feel confidently assured that they retain us so 
much in mind as to feel a lively interest in our final welfare, and in the 
anticipation of our transition to their society. The day of resurrection 
is to be looked forwaird to as the consummation of the felicity of the fol¬ 
lowers of Christ. But that event must certainly be far distant; and I 
sometimes wonder that religious teachers advert so little in any distinct 
terms to the state immediately after death, which inspiration has so 
expressly asserted to be a state of consciousness, and of happiness to 
faithful souls. 

It is true (and it appears to me one of the most mysterious things in 
the economy of the divine government), that the information afforded us 
by revelation on this subject is extremely limited. But assume only that 
the state of good men immediately after death is a state of consciousness, 
of deliverance from all the ills of mortality, and above all from sm, and 
then what a grand series of felicities they have in prospect before the 
resurrection which is yet at the distance of many ages, possibly of 
thousands of years. Their close vicinity to that state, on which they are 
to enter, after a few’ years at all events, and many of them in a much 
shorter time, may w’ell bring the subject and the anticipation to press 
with a more immediate interest than even the resurrection itself. How 


LETTERS. 


235 


short a time comparatively, at the most, you will have to wait for the 
call to rejoin the friend who is gone before you. How near, how very 
near, he was to the other world and the other life, when he wrote his last 
letter to me, in which he made so striking a reference to the “ grand and 
final journey,”* being then not more, I think, than about eight weeks — 
eight little weeks ! from his departure to the other w'orld. Oh what an 
emphasis of interest if he could have known how near he was ! But 
he needed not this knowledge as a warning; he had taken the solemn 
W'arning long, long before, and sought to be in a habitual preparation. 
Let us, unknowing where, in the dark distance before us, is the appointed 
hour, let us earnestly do the same. 

You, my dear"friend, do not need to be instructed in the topics which 
are available for both consolation and admonition. Your own thoughts 
remind you that, estimable as was the friend who had been called away, 
and deserving of a warm affection while present, and still when now 
absent, there is yet one being, the supreme Friend, who claims a still 
more devoted affection, and that the affection due to him, infinitely due, 
includes submission, acquiescence, resignation ; and even an approbation 
of his proceedings. You know that he can, by an increased sense of his 
favor, make a compensation for what he takes away, and that his throne 
of mercy is constantly accessible to the petitioner for that blessing, and 
that there is an all-powerful Intercessor there. You are reminded that 
a Christian is not “ to sorrow as those that have no hope.” You are 
aware that life, while continued to you, has still its duties, which are 
incompatible with a yielding up of the mind to “ be swallowed up of over¬ 
much sorrow.” Affection for the friend who has been withdrawn from 
you, in order to be what it should be, will include a grateful pleasure in 
thinking what he has gained by the removal. You have to consider also 
through what a very long period you have possessed, what is now, wisely 
and for the best beyond ail doubt, withdrawn from you. Gratitude for 
that should not be lost in present sorrow. True indeed, the having lost 
a blessing long enjoyed, might be lamented wdth bitterness almost 
unmingled, if there were nothing in prospect, if the loss were total and 
final. But how different is your anticipation of hereafter; and this 
difference should have its effect; it claims to have its effect, in counter¬ 
acting the sorrow. Time also, though you may as yet hardly be able to 
believe it, loill, by degrees, have a softening influence. And meanwhile 
it is highly desirable that you should have the resolution to resume 
somewhat of the activities of life, and of the former social habits, as 

* “ But should thes.e pleasing anticipations be suspended, by any one or 
more of us being called away on that grand and final journey from the 
world, for which we were all sent into it, may that event prove to those 
who depart, rather a glorious compensation for, than disappointment of, 
whatever pleasures we had been promising ourselves here, and an efficient 
incitement to those left behind more diligently and ardently to seek and 
insure their interest in the solid and permanent enjoyment of those sublime 
scenes anl that exalted companionship.”— Mr. Stokes to Mr. Foster. 


230 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


far as the circumstances of your situation may admit or may supply 
occasions. 

. . . You will well believe that I set a very special value on the hox 
which you so kindly gave as a token for the remembrance of our departed 
friend. How often and how many years it has served as a kind of 
medium of pleasant communication between us. 

The flowers will soon appear in your garden. I fear they will not 
appear quite so beautiful and cheerful as they were wont to do. But still 
I hope the reviving spring will not have lost all its attractions. A poet 
has said mournfully, that no spring returns to man. But this is not 
true of pious men. The case is only, that “ it is a spring season long 
deferred.” But it is in reserve, and will come at last. 

My dear friend, you will believe with what sincerity and sympathy, 

I am, 

Yours, very faithfully, 

J. Foster. 


CCXIII. TO THE REV. F. CLOWES. 
fOn the Intermediate State.] 

June 23, 1839. 

, My dear Sir, —Allow me to apologize for not having long since 
acknowledged your letter, and attempted something in the way of 
answer. But truly I have much more need to ask for, than competence 
to offer, anything to be called opinions on the interesting subject of which 
you write. 

It would seem that the generality of our fellow-Christians are content 
to have no such opinions. Reposing on an indistinct idea, on an idea 
formed on common figures and analogies, of heaven, and going to heaven, 
they are exempt from any restless curiosity about an intermediate state. 
This does appear somewhat strange, when it is considered how very dis¬ 
tinct a state there must be from that which is to follow the resurrection 
and the final judgment ; when it is considered, too, that while the latter 
is at a vast distance (as we measure time), a few years at the most, possi¬ 
bly, as to some of us, but a few months, or even days, lie between us and 
the next stage of our existence. What we shall behold, and shall be, 
so very soon, is surely a matter of mighty interest. 

From the consideration of its close approach, almost, if I may so 
express it, to contact with so advanced an age as mine, it has often an 
ascendency in my thoughts over the ultimate state beheld in such 
remoteness of prospect. 

I assume v ith entire confidence the soul’s consciousness after death ; 
this is implied in many passages of Scripture ; but a number of them 
(often cited) assert it in so plain a manner, that nothing but the most 
resolute perversity of criticism can attempt to invalidate them. 

But it often appears to me one of the dark things in the divine govern* 



LETTERS. 


237 


ment that revelation, considered as intended to impress and influence our 
minds, as well as to inform them, in regard to our concern with hereaf¬ 
ter, should have limited the communication to so very narrow an extent 
beyond the mere fact. It is true that solemn mijsteriy has an imposing 
eflect on minds habitually contemplative, or occasionally excited to 
earnest thought. But still what is so verij mysterious, so much of the 
element of darkness as not even to shadow out any defined images, frus¬ 
trating the attempt to descry or shape them, is apt to make but a tran¬ 
sitory impression—an impression much depending on the mood of the 
mind, since there are no distinct forms to become fixed and abiding in 
the understanding. 

It is probable that some circumstances of the invisible economy may 
be of such a nature, as little in analogy with anything within our present 
experience, or knowledge, that they could not be conveyed intelligibly in 
the language of this world. But there might be presented plainly to our 
understanding through that medium, by a messenger from the other 
world, many things on which a thoughtful spirit would, if permitted, 
solicit a communication from such a messenger. If we might be allowed 
to imagine such an exception to a general law as a brief visit from a 
departed friend, with permission of making to us some disclosures of 
the unseen economy, an earnest inquisitiveness heretofore indulged in 
vain, might prompt such inquiries as the following : 

Where is it—in what realm of the creation—and have you an abode 
fixed to one locality ? Do you exist as an absolutely unembodied spirit: 
or have you some material vehicle, and if so, of what nature ? In what 
manner was it at your entrance verified to you that you were in another 
world, and with what emotion ? Was an angel your conductor ? How 
does the strange phenomenon. Death, appear to you, now that you look 
back upon it ? What thought or feeling have you respecting your de¬ 
serted body ? What is your mode of perceiving external existence, and 
to what extent does that perception reach ? Do you retain a vivid and 
comprehensive remembrance of the world and the life which you have 
quitted ? Are you associated with the friends who preceded you in 
death ? What is the manner of intercommunication ? What are spe¬ 
cially your employments ? What account do you take of time ? What 
new manner of manifestation of the divine presence ? Is there a per- 
so 7 ial manifestation of Jesus Christ ? Have you a sense, a faculty, to 
perceive angels as personal objects, analogously to what we should here 
call a visible appearance ? Are you admitted to any personal knowledge 
of the wise and good of ancient times ? Is there an assignment into 
classes ? Do the newly arrived acquire immediately an adaptation to 
the amazing change ? Do you still take a peculiar interest for those 
who were dear to you, whom you left behind ? Have you any intimation 
how long it will be before they follow ? Are you apprised continuously 
of much, or of anything, that is taking place on earth ; if so by what 
means, and with what feelings ? Have you any appointed intervention 


238 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


in the affairs of this world ? Is the awful mystery of the divine govern¬ 
ment of this world in any degree cleared up to your view ? Is the great 
intellectual superiority which some have possessed on earth maintained 
in the other world ? Is there a continual progress in knowledge ; if so, 
must not those who have been in the spiritual world centuries, or thou¬ 
sands of years, be so immensely in advance ot those recently entering as 
to be almost humiliating to the latter ? In what manner is the reiribu- 
iive designation signified ?—is it by any formal judicial act, or only by a 
deep internal consciousness ? Is the separation so wide between the 
good and evil that no distinct information of the condition of the one is 
conveyed to the other ? Or are they so mutually apprised as our Lord’s 
parable of Dives and Lazarus would seem to intimate ? How is main¬ 
tained your complacency in the appointment to wait an indefinite, but 
certainly very, very long period, before the attainment of complete and 
ultimate happiness ? 

Such inquiries (thus noted without sequence or order) will sometimes 
be started in meditative thought, and most of them could he intelligibly 
answered by the supposed visitant, bringing the experience of the other 
world. That which would be the intelligible answer, that is, the state¬ 
ment of the truth, the fact, might have been, or the most important of 
them, communicated by revelation. And, a priori, it might have been 
conceived that such knowledge, in^ a certain selection and measure, 
would be a highly proper and almost necessary part of a revelation to 
beings so profoundly interested in the subject, and at the same time 
needing the utmost force of impression to secure their due attention 
to it. 

Why, then, did Revelation, while answering in the affirmative the ques¬ 
tion,—Is there a conscious state after Death ? withhold an answer- to 
those inquiries, which would solicit some knowledge of the manner and 
circumstances of it 7 

Necessarily we are convinced that this silence is for the best: but per¬ 
haps not in the same sense which the words would at first view seem to 
import; namely, that the withholding of the information is more condu¬ 
cive to our spiritual interest than the communication of it would have 
been. For the best it must be, in the sense, that it is in conformity with 
the laws by which infinite wisdom and justice govern the world. But, 
as a depraved race, we are placed under a punitive dispensation; a part 
of which is, that many things which would be for our good, even our 
spiritual good, are withheld. 

Divine grace itself, the supreme good, the sine qua non, to man, of 
happy existence here and hereafter, while not conferred at all on the vast 
majority, why so partially conferred, on those who do receive a measure 
of it ? As an ampler communication of it would be unspeakably bene¬ 
ficial, the restriction must be because a sinful race are doomed not to 
receive what would be most for their good. It may be by the same rule, 
that we are denied such a knowledge of the invisible world, as would 


LETTERS. 


239 


have tended to make the prospect of that world more influentially im¬ 
pressive. And it is difficult to avoid thinking: that a few of the special 
facts of that world, revealed discernably through the solemn mystery, so 
discernably as to bear an evident character of reality, though not presented 
with an unshaded, palpable, prominent, distinctness, detached wholly from 
the mystery of the scene—might and would contribute to keep our minds 
directed, and under a graver impression, to that region which it infinitely 
imports us to be preparing to enter. That such a disclosure is not 
made, may therefore be deemed a part of the punitive economy. 

It is not forgotten that our Lord has said, “ Neither would they believe 
though one rose from the dead.” But it does not seem necessary to un¬ 
derstand this declaration as regarding more than a strong conviction of 
the general fact of a future state of retribution; the evidence for which 
is assumed to be so sufficient, that the rejection of it betrays a state of 
mind on which any corroborative evidence would equally be lost. 

It would not be a fair inference from this, that to minds fully con¬ 
vinced of that great truth, and thoughtful concerning it, some more spe¬ 
cial information would be useless. Even as to the case put by our 
Lord, it is not said that a visit of one from the dead would not be a cor¬ 
roborative, and might not be a valuable circumstance of evidence, but 
that it would be, with all the other evidence, unavailing to minds of such 
infidel hardness. 

But that mysterious hereafter ! We must submit to feel that we are 
in the dark; and have to walk by faith in the mere general fact, of a 
conscious and retributive state immediately after death; revealed with¬ 
out definitions, illustrations, expansion into a field of varieties and spe¬ 
cific forms. Still a contemplative spirit hovers with insuppressible in¬ 
quisitiveness about the dark frontier, beyond which it knows that wonderful 
realities are existing, realities of greater importance to it than the whole 
world on this side of that limit. We watch for some glimmer through any 
part of the solemn shade ; but still are left to the faint, dubious resources of 
analogy, imagination, and conjecture ; and are never satisfied with any at¬ 
tempt at a defined conception shaped by other minds or our own. If it be a 
conception indistinct, and variable, and, so to speak, merely elemental, it 
does not take strong hold of the imagination; if it be reduced to a de¬ 
cided and specific delineation, it comes, almost inevitably, into so near an 
analogy to our terrestrial condition, that the mind recoils from it, both as 
being of too familiar and homely an aspect, and as being essentially im¬ 
probable, when we reflect what a mighty difference there must be in the 
mode and perhaps the scene of existence, between the present state, and 
that of a disembodied spirit. How changed must be the nature of our 
relations when we have passed away from under all known laws of the 
material world, and are received into the spiritual system ? The mind 
has not, therefore, the power to accept a scheme which would figure its 
new mode of existence in close analogy to the present. This is felt in 
reading Mr. Sheppard’s very ingenious, and in many parts beautiful 


240 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ideal creation in his “ Autumn Dream.”* It is an imagery very pleas¬ 
ing to look upon ; but there is still a sentiment which prompts to say, 
No ; it is too much like this terrestrial place and state where we are ; it 
is a poetical Tefinement rather than an essential change ,* my rnind cannot 
yield itself; though unable to dream a fairer vision ; indeed it could not 
dream a vision to which it would or could yield itself content that such 
should be the reality—of which it would say complacently “ let it be so.” 

We wish to take what advantage we can of the few intimations afford¬ 
ed by revelation. “ Paradise ;” “ Abraham’s bosom ;” being “ with 
Christ;” “ present with the Lord.” 

I suppose there is an agreement of learned men that among the ancient 
Jews, and subsequently the early Christians, the term Paradise designat¬ 
ed the happy part of the invisible world—the Hades to which departing 
spirits are conveyed—and that it must have been employed by our Lord 
and St. Paul in that sense. 

It must be a ja/ace; the existing spirit exists ; but whether 

within even our mundane (solar) system, there can be no surmise, but 
this—that it would hardly seem probable that the spirit should be removed 
indefinitely far from the world to which it has belonged but a moment 
before, and which is the old place of sojourn of the order of beings to 
which it is still inseparably related. And yet what world in our system, 
under the same physical laws, by the testimony of science as our own, 
can be conceived to have any peculiar fitness for the receptacle and abode 
of spirits ? One ingenious speculator will have the appointed place to be 
the sun. In the indulgence of imagination one would, certainly, have 
less objection to that sublime luminary, than to any of his inferiors; but 
how arbitrary must be any such conjecture; and what should be the 
peculiar fitness ? 

The transfer of the attractive denomination. Paradise, seems to affirm 
such an analogy as will authorize our assurance, that it is as delightful 
to the dwellers ihere as the terrestrial paradise was to man in innocence. 
And the region and the inhabitants must have as direct an adaptation to 
each other, as the garden of Eden had to the compound constitution of 
man, soul and body. But what a strangely different mode of adaptation 
For how can the phenomena and properties of place be adapted to disem¬ 
bodied spirits ? If we suppose the place to be rich in the characters of 
sublimity and beauty, and all other physical qualities, displayed in mate¬ 
rial elements and aspects, such as could be taken cognizance of by 
means of organs of sense like ours, how can they be apprehended by 
spirits divested of them ? And yet we cannot think, either that a place 
presented to us under the name and image of Paradise can be without 
some such fair atrributes, or that they can be lost on the perceptions of 
the disembodied spirits happily located there. We cannot conceive 

* An Autumn Dream: Thoughts in Verse, on the Intermediate State 
of Happy Spirits, &.c., with a Dissertation concerning the mind of the 
lower animals. By John Sheppard, author of Thoughts on Devotion. 24 
ed.,1841. 


LETTERS. 


241 


of it as merely to contain them in, while they are indifferent to its mate¬ 
rial glories. 

There arises a suggestion whether, in order to a perceptive intimacy 
with the material characters of the place, it be not necessary that the 
spirit be invested with some material vehicle, to replace the gross mortal 
body which it has abandoned, and it is an allowable conjecture that it 
may have such a medium of perception and action during the interval of 
waiting ; waiting, in the case of many of these spirits, so very long for 
the resurrection. At the same time it cannot be conceived that even 
pure spirits, if we should suppose angels to be such, should not have a 
most perfect vivid perception of all the fair and magnificent material phe¬ 
nomena of the scenes where they are present in execution of their offi¬ 
ces. To them such characters of their Master’s works cannot be all 
blank and indifferent. 

The idea, “ Abraham’s bosom,” is too figurative (and at the same time 
Judaical) to admit of definite statement. But it is obviously of intimate¬ 
ly and affectionately social import. Also it seems to imply that good 
men of a later age are conveyed into the scx*dety of those who have en¬ 
tered the spiritual world long before. There is all imaginable reason to 
believe that good men will renew their communication with the friends 
who have preceded them in death. 

The expressions, “ with Christ,” “ present with the Lord,” must imply 
some much more direct, sensible, evident manifestation of Christ, than 
anything attainable in the mortal state; something more answering to 
the idea of society, than can be realized by the most lively faith. Some¬ 
thing indeed that sets faith, in any sublunary sense and mode of it, aside 
by what shall be far better; the expressions would seem to imply an 
object of immediate perception—a personal recognition. 

The great stress uniformly laid in the New Testament on the resur¬ 
rection, proves that the soul will attain a very high advancement in what¬ 
ever can form its felicity, by the assumption of a glorious and immortal 
vehicle, formed from the element of earth. Sometimes indeed there is a 
kind of ambitious aspiring, that would almost wish to have done with 
matter, for ever, in the constitution of our existence. If angels —any 
created beings—be absolutely pure spirits, it would seem as if this com¬ 
bination of our spirits with matter, however refined, would mark us as 
an order of beings essentially and eternally inferior. But could we have 
therefore a right to complain ? For there must be superior and inferior 
even in happy existence. Doubtless there are orders of beings tran- 
scendently, and that must be eternally, superior to the human the hu¬ 
man which is, as a plain fact, the lowest of strictly rational creatures. 
With regard, however, to matter, any objection we might feel to be 
j clothed with it, may be overruled by the consideration, that our Lord 
himself appears to have retained a connection with it in his exalted state; 
whether for a permanence, after ho shall have laid down his mediatorial 
office, we cannot know, and may be allowed to doubt. 

VOL. II. 1'7 




242 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


Redeemed souls in the intermediate state must be possessed of ample 
means of happiness, if it were only for this plain reason—that else the 
long period of their waiting for the final consummation would be insup¬ 
portable. To those who depart now, or departed recently, it will be a 
duration of very many ages ; and no doubt they know it well. But 
think of the saints before the deluge, or in the patriarchal ages, foresee¬ 
ing that consummation, at the distance of many thousand years, or at 
least having had now the actual proof of the long delay. We must not 
imagine them exercising patience^ since that implies something endured, 
suffered ; but to cause them an entire complacency under this immensely 
protracted delay of their highest felicity,—to secure them invariably 
happy in their present time and state, century after century, millennium 
after millennium,—to prevent such earnestness of anticipation, as should 
partake of restlessness ; to do this, what mighty resources for enjoyment 
must they possess ! And these resources must be in the activity of the 
intellectual faculties and the affections ; in attaining truth, loving good¬ 
ness, admiring grandeur, adoring the Divinity. Nor can we well con¬ 
ceive they should be in a state of total inaction in a more practical sense; 
that they should be, so to speak, laid aside in an inert existence, while 
activity is prevailing, in all probability, through the wliole empire of the 
Almighty. Should it not be probable that the servants of GckI, of every 
order, everywhere in the universe, and in every stage of their existence, 
have something to do, some office to execute ? And if such be the voca¬ 
tion of departed human spirits, it might be no violence of conjecture to 
suppose they may sometimes, some of them, have appointments in a cer¬ 
tain connection with the race here, to which by their nature they still 

belong, though their immediate mortal relation to it has ceased. 

Benevolent they certainly are, and if they have active employments 
assigned them, it cannot be conceived there are any fitter objects of be¬ 
nevolence than the poor sojourners in the world they have left. At all 
events it is to be presumed that the manner in which their faculties, or 
call them powers, are exercised, must be that which will make their ex¬ 
istence most worth, if we may so express it, in the creation—most worth 
that they should exist as intelligent beings; and it must be that which 
will render most service and honor to the Lord of all. 

A thought is suggested as to one great difference between the ser¬ 
vice so rendered, of whatever special kind it be, and that which was ren¬ 
dered by piety in the mortal, and partly sinful life preceding. For if, as 
we must believe, death be to good men the end of all sin, and the eman¬ 
cipated spirit be constituted immediately and absolutely holy, then its 
activity being perfectly conformed to the divine law, will need no pardon. 
It will not therefore be under the economy of redemption, in the same 
sense as the very imperfect obedience in the mortal state. What a 
strange contrast this must make in consciousness and review ! 

Another suggestion arises, in respect to those who have already been 
during an immensely long period, according to our measures of time, in 



LETTERS. 


243 


that separate state. Their recollected mortal life must appear to them, 
in point of duration, most insignificant in their retrospect. What an 
unimaginable power of memory they must possess, if they retain it vividly 
in sight after so vast an interval, occupied, as we assume, with a contin¬ 
ual and perhaps very various exercise of their faculties. But after all 
our conjectures, imaginings, and almost impatient speculations, here we 
still are, in front of the awful impervious veil. How striking to consider, 
while we stand here, that one and another of our friends, with us just as 
yesterday, inquisitively conversing perhaps on this very subject, are now, 
are at this instant in the midst of reality; have experimental knowledge 
of two worlds, while we are yet confined to one. 

And next the consideration that we also shall ere while, some of us 
very shortly, go into the light and amazement of that revelation. What 
an emphatic call to the utmost diligence and earnestness to be ready for 
the transition,—and what an intensely severe reproach to indifierence, 
negligence, and absorption of the soul in temporal things, while consci¬ 
ously approaching every moment nearer to so portentous an event. 

My dear sir, you will believe that I am fully aware how little there is 
in these pages to any other eftect than that of stimulating inquiry, and 
showing the impossibility of answering it. Still the thoughtful mind 
cannot, and ought not, to let the great subject alone. We must continue 
inquiring, till we obtain an answer elsewhere. . . . 

I remain, my dear sir, 

' Yours, faithfully, 

J. Foster. 

P. S.—I read, slightly indeed, after its publication, Taylors “ Physi¬ 
cal Theory of another Life,” but, as far as I recollect, he takes no dis¬ 
tinct account of the intermediate state, speculating almost exclusively, 
and very ingeniously, on the final state. The scriptural arguments 
(and the others) for the mutual recognition after death of those who have 
been friends on earth, are well brought together in one of Gisborne's Es~ 
says, in a small volume of which I forget the exact title. 


CCXIV. TO THE REV. THOMAS COLES. 

Stapleton, August 23, 1839. 

.... I have to thank you for your letter, written under circum¬ 
stances of mournful interest, anticipations so soon to be realized. Then 
you could hold converse with the object of your affectionate solicitude; 
now it is silence and absence as complete as two different worlds can 
make it. How strange, how striking it is to reflect, that the loved per¬ 
son who was here in living communication but a few days since, is now in 
a realm invisible and unknown, and (wherever it is) unimaginably different 
from this, where he was and is not. How much within this so brief an 




244 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


interval he has attained to know which we know not, and could not know 
in even a sojourn on earth of a thousand years. How vast a movement 
forward, made in one moment, in the career of a human spirit! But 
what other movements, thus sudden perhaps, are effected by the progress 
of duration, in an eternal career! Any view of eternity is overwhelm¬ 
ing to thought, but peculiarly to the thought that we, that this very soul 
shall exist for ever. Sometimes, even apart from the idea of retribution, 
it seems almost fearful. “ How can I sustain an endless existence ? 
How can I prolong sentiment and action for ever and ever ? What may 
or can become of me in so stupendous a predicament ? What an accu¬ 
mulation of miracles to preserve my faculties, my being, from becoming 
exhausted and extinct!” 

How can there be an undecaying, ever new, and fresh vitality and 
animation, to go powerfully along with an infinite series of objects, 
changes, excitements, activities ? 

While sympathizing with you under the mournful dispensation, I must 
congratulate you on that by which it is so happily alleviated, the delight¬ 
ful confidence that it is well with him who has departed. And the more 
cordial will be this consolation from the circumstance, that (as we heard 
it here) in the earlier stage of his illness, his mind was oppressed by 
gloomy apprehensions. How happy a change for Mm, as antecedent and 
preparatory to the still happier change accomplished in his final hour. 
You will have sometimes mused on what might have been, if God had 
willed it; how your son, thus brought under the full influence of Religion, 
might have been appointed to a protracted life of Christian excellence 
and social usefulness. You can easily figure him as passing through 
many years of such a life, a pleasure to yourself and a benefit to others. 
But you know that the sovereign will had reasons for deciding otherwise, 
and that those reasons, if they could be made intelligible to you, you 
would absolutely and emphatically approve. It is probable that he, the 
subject of the decision, does by this time understand and approve them, 
and has a complacent confidence that you, not as yet understanding them, 
will devoutly acquiesce. How much he has at present the advantage of 
you, if he has a clear manifestation of that concerning which you are 
called to exercise submissive faith! 


CCXV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

1839. 

.... There is nothing for me to say, save and except an ex¬ 
pression of my gratification that we may now be confident of having you 
here, for a term, I hope, as long as the life of both us two. Which of us 
is to leave this dark world the first ? On supposition that the Great 
Book should be placed before you, with intimation that, if you chose 
(being permitted) to open at such a page, you would read the year, the 



LETTERS. 


245 


month, the day appointed for your entrance on another world, could you 
forbear ? Suppose you had opened the volume where you would have just 
only to raise the next leaf, would you touch its edge, and, deliberating, 
decide to leave it still lying flat, the portentous page on the other side ? 
I am supposing that you were assured, on the right authority, of exemp¬ 
tion from divine inhibition, and therefore culpability. 

.... Thank you for sending the Watchman; some of it I have read, 
and do really mean to read all in it that relates to the question. I have 
read very little, hardly anything, of the long debates, filling one half¬ 
score of columns after another of the Morning Chronicle. 

As to the whole aflair that has raised so prodigious a hubbub, one can¬ 
not help feeling that it is worthy of all satire. 

A national education —there arc millions of children and youth sorely 
wanting it; and there is a proposition for applying a miserable driblet of 
money to such a purpose—no less than £ 30 , 000 , about as much as is 
paid out of the public purse to some two or three sinecurist placemen— 
not one-third of what is paid to the Queen Dowager; and what a com¬ 
bustion about it over all tlie land ! It is a mighty engine constructing to 
be worked by the pope and the devil. Verily they have not been accus¬ 
tomed to work so cheap. They must have found out how to make a 
little go a great way. I wish they would be as moderate in all other de¬ 
partments of their receipts and expenditures; we should then be able to 
do without divers things, Methodism among the rest. Said Methodism 
has lent itself in aid of what we perfectly well know to be the real prin¬ 
ciple, and under but thin disguise, of the aristocracy and the great major¬ 
ity of the church, viz. a mortal hatred of the mental improvement of the 
mass of the people. They would rather (the Methodists I mean) that 
the miserable multitude should be left in their ignorance and barbarism 
(an ignorance and barbarism no longer, as formerly, inert, prostrate, and 
obsequious, but strongly rankling and fermenting into active mischief), 
than they should be educated in any manner not making the specialities 
of religion the principal thing. 

But, indeed,-I observe, is for making quite a clear business of 

it—is for having no national education at all, since the government, he 
says, have not only no duty, but no right to take any concern in the edu¬ 
cation of the people. Duly tax the people, and punish them when they 
commit crimes, and there their business ends ; for I do not see what busi¬ 
ness they have even to make laws for them, to tell them what is wrong; 
for law is always considered as a moral education, not less than a rule of 
punition. 

.... Where there is not downright hypocrisy, there may be affecta¬ 
tion and cant. To hear this Methodist declamation, one might think that 
knowledge, cultivating good sense, as the opposites of brutish ignorance, 
vulgarity, and coarse sensuality, were of no value at all, unless as com¬ 
bined with— not the general principles of religion, but with a special 
creed. To read well, write well, to understand the language well; to be 



246 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


ready in arithmetic, to acquire some of the plainer principles of the most 
useful sciences, were utterly worthless;—as well be without |;hem, unless 
as interwoven Ihroughout with the catechism. At this rate a boy 
should not be taught a mechanical art, or a trade, unless in immediate con¬ 
nection with detailed articles of faith. What a nuisance, therefore, are 
the thousands of private day-schools which are teaching’ these supposed 
useful matters. There is a large quantity of emit in all this. 

Nor was it to stand for anything that in the government’s plan there 
was to be a clergyman at the head of the institution, to see to the re¬ 
ligious instruction of the church pupils, and that an arrangement was to 
be made for the religious instruction, separately, of the dissenting portion 
of them. As to the Roman Catholic portion (or popish, I would name 
it), they are to be left in the pure savage state, unless their own party' 
have adequate means and exertion to give them some little education. 

As to the real intrinsic character of popery (which shows itself when 
there is nothing to keep it under restraint as in Spain), I fully agree 

with-. .But he admits that, practically, it is very greatly modified 

in this Protestant country; it is so, too, in France, a non-protestant 
country. But then, does not this, just in that proportion, modify and re¬ 
duce the harm of its combination with the school-teaching in this country ? 
Or would he allow himself to be taken for one of those dreamers who 
are apprehending the approach of such an ascendency of popery here as 
will set loose its real character into action ? .... He has great real or 
pretended reverence for the established church. But what does the in¬ 
crease of popery say of the quality and efficacy of that church as a Pro¬ 
testant guardian ? And, talk of popery! It is in the grand centre and 
vomitory of that church that popery is daily augmenting and threatening 
to inundate the ecclesiastical domains. 

P.S. I have hardly expressed with due strength the observation that 

- and - must wish that the Irish, and equally any other 

popish nation, should be left wholly and absolutely uneducated, abandoned 
literally to the savage state, since the intermixed popery vitiates the 
whole thing essentially. Perhaps they will reply, “ No, our objection is 
to a Protestant state patronizing and paying for such educationit comes 
in effect to the same. The Protestant state is to refuse because such 
education is absolutely bad, worse than nothing, and what, therefore, it 
cannot be wished that any state should confer or inffict on the people. 
They must deprecate that the Irish popish gentry should, from their owm 
private means, support such an education. At any rate, supposing that 
they (these gentry) could not or would not, and that the people were so 
imbued with popery that they could not (as how should they ?) yield to 
receive an expressly Protestant education, it would then be the duty of 
the Protestant state to teach them nothing (except their liability to he 
hanged), and leave them to become, as nearly as possible, like the beasts 
of the field. 






LETTERS. 


247 


CCXVI. TO JOHN PURSER, ESQ, 

Stapleton^ February 4, 1840. 

.... The alarming danger now happily and for some time to come, 
blown over, that the Tories might come into power, had a main reference 
to the too probably dangerous consequences in Ireland. For the escape, 
the temporary escape of both countries, thanks to the Irish members of 
parliament, and to Dan. as their imperial chief. The high-sounding 
epithet is authorized by the plain fact that there is no individual, probably 
in the world, who, on the strength of what he is in his mere self, in the 
absence of all accessaries of office, rank, wealth, connexion, has so pro¬ 
digious a power. We of the reforming (or call it radical) class, have 
exceptions and grave ones, to take against him, but on the whole are 
vastly glad to have him as the Achilles of our camp. We want every 
strong hand against the proud and powerful party arrayed in fierce oppo¬ 
sition to every kind of national improvement. Do but look at their tem¬ 
per and purposes, more flagrantly manifested of late than ever before. 
Hatred of everything tending to favor and advance the interests of the 
people ; hatred of yopular education, on any other condition than that of 
vigorous subservience to the church; hatred of dissenters and their just 
claims; hatred of all attempts at the correction of old corrupted institu¬ 
tions ; bigotry in all forms; and an immense quantity of the most loath¬ 
some hypocrisy under the pretence and boast of zeal for Protestantism; 
a furious bellowing kept up for the basest purposes by very many, who 
neither know nor care anything at all about real religion. 

You advert to the “ Oxford Tract’’’ concern. It is curious enough 
that, just contemporaneously with the loudest burst of the cleric outcry 
about Protestantism, a section of them, rapidly extending as it is under¬ 
stood, are forswearing that same Protestantism, and veering far and fast 
toward Rome. I have read very little on the subject, not even Taylor’s 
pieces,* which however I do mean to read some time soon; very able 
and efiective I hear on all hands. It is but small interest that I feel 
about the whole affair, excepting in one point of view, its being a schism 
in the establishment, tending to confusion and dislocation, an intimation 
of rot and cracks in the timbers of the old pernicious edifice. On this 
account it pleases me much ; for while it is too true that it is doing some 
injury to religion, I hope it will do much more damage to what has been 
and continues infinitely pernicious to Christianity, a state-established 
hierarchy. 

All I have lived to see has confirmed me faithful to the principles of 
that early time which you well remember. I want, if I could, to repel 
the suspicion, that my favorite early associate, friend, and—dare I say? 
__pupil, has somewhat deflected toward the more fashionable side. . . . 

* Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the 
Times. By the Author of “ Spiritual Despotism.” 


248 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CCXVII. TO SIR C. E. SMITH, BART. 

March 9, 1840. 

Dear Sir, —. ... On supposition that yon saw iny letter to Dr. L., 
I shall not need to repeat in many words what I observed as to the posi¬ 
tion of writers in the controversy, that the work is most appropriately 
and advantageously in the hands of men vigilantly attentive to the con¬ 
temporary movements; immediately apprised of the course of opinions; 
habitually inspecting periodical publications; prompt to seize topics and 
occasions as they arise ; men, who, in a phrase of the field, can shoot Jly- 
ing. Here specialities must make a large part of the service; for surely 
we are not now to be constantly repeating the common-places of the 
argument. 

We cannot but believe that intelligent controversy will do some good 
in favor of truth. It will at least tend to give dissenters a better hold of 
their principles, of which the mass of them are very ignorant; and it 
may prevent some waverers from going over to the establishment—will 
it do much more ? Do you expect that it will ? Where are the prose¬ 
lytes from the adherents to the church ? adherents confirmed such by 
either opinion or habit ? With one or two exceptions, what clergyman 
(anything worth as an acquisition to us) has become a dissenter ? and 
what laymen of any account have fallen into our ranks ? My sj)here of 
knowledge is extremely narrow; but I do not learn that even the ex¬ 
treme, and in many instances violent and outrageous bigotry of the 
clergy, so glaring in the present times, has had the efiect of exciting in 
church-goers a disgust against the church itself. They cling to it in spite 
of any dislike or disapprobation (/f indeed they feel it) of the spirit of so 
many of its ministers. It seems to be only on those who are adverse or 
indifferent to the church that this furious illiberality has the elfect—the 
good effect I will call it—of creating or confirming an antipathy to the 
establishment. And is it not probable that this virulent bigotry will do 
ten times more for the cause of dissent in the way of consolidation among 
tlrcmselves, and of acquisition from the intelligent indifferents, if such 
there be, than all the theoretical argumentation ? Argument will be but 
a subsidiary force; let it be added, however, as a sort of guide to the 
action of the stronger force. 

Here occurs to me a consideration that strikes me very strongly. 
You wish the controversy to be carried on in an amicable manner ; quite 
right for an intercommunication direct, and almost, as it were, personal, 
between the parties. But at the same time, in an interchange of reason¬ 
ings on these terms, the dissenter is precluded from by far the most 
efiective of his resources; I mean, an unqualified exhibition of the prac¬ 
tical character of the hierarchy reviewed on the wider ground of history, 
or (more immediately available) as seen in our own history during the 
last few generations, and as manifested in the present times. 

.... Look at the present state and temper of the church ; the into- 


LETTERS. 


'M9 

lerance of the most ostensible and prominent portion of it, ac(jiilesced 
in by the main or whole body, or at least not protested against by any 
part of it;—the firm alliance with political corruption; the opposition to 
all sorts of reform ; the identifying of Christianity with the establish¬ 
ment, or almost giving the precedence to the latter; the essentially 
worldly nature of the whole system of appointment by patronage, pur¬ 
chase at auction, &c., &.C., and the melancholy and disastrous fact that a 
vast majority of the clergy teach a doctrine fatally erroneous, if the doc¬ 
trine of the reformers be true. Now, all this belongs to the dissenters’ 
argument, it is of the essence of their case, and without it they can do 
but very partial justice to that case. They have a right to insist on this 
as manifesting the essentially vicious nature of an established church ; 
that these are not mere incidents, foreign and separable ; if they had been 
so, in w’hat country so likely as in England sliould they have been 
cleared off, leaving the establishment a pure Christian institution ? Why 
do I trouble you to read this prolixity of sentences ? it is to show that 
the dissenting principle cannot be asserted in the fulness of its legitimate 
argument in sucli a controversy as churclirnen will admit to be amicable 
or even civil. They will require you to come away out of sight of all 
this, and to go quietly with them on some ideal ground of a plausible 
theory. They will talk to you (just as if the thing were not palpably 
Utopian) about a supposed ecclesiastical institution that should send 
throughout the country some dozen thousand pious, well-disciplined, 
diligent, exemplary instructors, vigilantly superintended by faithful, zea¬ 
lous, apostolic bishops, authorized and aided in every way by patrons and 
a government intent on the spiritual welfare of the people; and then 
they will challenge you with the question, “ Would not this be an excel¬ 
lent thing, far better than leaving the important concern to voluntaryism, 
fanaticism, and chance ?” To which the proper answer would be, “ It 
is not worth making a question about so idle a fiction; wait till the gov¬ 
ernment, the prelacy, and the body of aristocratic patronage shall consist 
at least of men decidedly religious ; till the universities shall be ‘ schools 
of the prophets,’ and till young men shall enter the church no longer as 
a mere 'profession, or in pursuit of the prizes, but from the serious desire 
to promote religion. Then bring the question into discussion. In the 
meantime we must be allowed to judge of an establishment according to 
its actual quality and working, as exemplified in such institutions, here¬ 
tofore and at the present time, and not according to any fanciful and 
impracticable theory.” 

By all means, let the arguments of a mere theoretical kind, such as 
maij be debated amicably with the better tempered of the opponents, and 
especially the scriptural one, so much insisted on by Dr. Wardlaw and 
others, be kept in action. They will be adapted to the small proportion 
of speculative thinkers. But for popular effect there is comparably 
greater power in an exhibition of the actual vices and mischiefs of 
establishments, and our own in particular. And the recent and present 


250 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


spirit of the church is such as to deserve no forbearance of this mode 
of conducting the war—a defensive war as it is. But here I am remind¬ 
ed that I should not, before a further inspection of the papers in your 
volume, assume that you have wholly forborne the use of such ammu¬ 
nition. The Oxford party are working to good purpose—fast cutting 
away the old boasted ground of the establishment— its efficacy to main¬ 
tain an uniformity of faith. 

I am, dear Sir, yours, very respectfully, 

J. Foster. 


CCXVIII. TO SIR C. E. SMITH, BART. 

^ ^pril 9, 1840. 

.... I most sincerely thank you for the gratification the book has 
afforded me, and I should add the valuable instruction —but for the mis¬ 
fortune of having about the worst memory of anybody in England, that 
is not absolutely in dotage. In strife against this sad grievance, I have 
read many of the papers two or three times. 

All your readers, even your opponents, must have been ready to testify 
to the urbanity, or I should rather say, the Christian spirit, in which you 
have declared your opinions on both the ecclesiastical and political topics. 

I cannot add any expression of hope that those opponents will have ad¬ 
mitted any conviction Irom your arguments, judicious as they are, and 
set forth in so excellent a spirit; for it is a fact, all the world over, that 
no opponent is ever convinced by controversy. I cannot recollect, that 
ever in my life I convinced any person, even in any degree, by opposi¬ 
tion in argument. How happens it, that all the argument on the subject 
of religious estal^j^lmicnts never has gained over an unit per thousand 
of some fifteen fllp^and clergymen, a tolerably considerable portion of 
them being, it may be presumed, men of conscience, and many of these 
being also men of large information and highly disciplined intellect ? 

While you acknowledge yourself to be hopeless of the clergy, I am 
glad that you can see cause to be even “ sanguine” as to a portion of 
the gentry; since it is a judgment which you have the means of form¬ 
ing on an extensive acquaintance in the country and in London, with 
individuals and with the signs of movement and change in opinions. 
Within my most diminutive sphere of acquaintance I am not aware of 
any favorable indications. 

.... We shall look with much interest beyond mere curiosity to the 
consequences of the commotion in Scotland; for a better understanding 
of which I am much indebted to your papers on the subject. It was not 
till lately that it attracted much of my attention. Some well written 
letters, in one of the daily papers, within the last few months, drew my 
partiality towards the non-intrusionists. But I was taken considerably 
aback by the account of a late public meeting of dissenters in Edin¬ 
burgh.They said very justly, the movers of this tumult are after 




LETTERS. 


251 


all the determined maintainers of an establishment, and grossly incon¬ 
sistent if not dishonest ones.They want to combine the privileges 

of dissenters (such as we maintain, at a great and voluntary cost) with 
the emolument and advantageous station of an establishment. They 
would repel and turn out the state, at one door, from claiming any inter¬ 
ference in their self-authorized proceedings, and summon it in at another, 
to render them its humble services, and pay their stipends and all their 
expenses, 

.... I attempted to read Mr. Alston’s pamphlet; I mean to do it; 
but in the first trial I stopped short. In the first few pages I was dumb¬ 
founded at his ignorance in citing “ the parable of the tares,” and his 
outright assertion (an assertion however got quite in vogue) that personal 
wickedness is no disqualification for the ministry of religion. The grave 
avowal of this impious absurdity was not likely to allow my memory of 
facts a quiet sleep. 

Your opponent F. H. (Dr, Arnold I believe) is evidently a very intel¬ 
ligent and a candid man. But what a plight such a man gets into, when 
he is to defend an establisliment. His sixth letter for instance. It ap¬ 
pears to me a piece of inextricable involvement; but indeed I had such 
difficulty to understand it, that I had not patience to make the competent 
trial. One needs no elaborate investigation to be very sure that all this 
business of arrangement, gradation, centralization, &c., has nothing to 
do with the plain, simple concern of teaching the Christian religion to 
the people.* 

Yet it is necessary there should be some minds able and resolute to 
traverse every })art of the debateable ground ; and you have done your 
part most worthily-thus far—as only an introduction, I trust, to a long 
sequel of valuable service; and while I arn too old and frigid to be 
sanguine about anything but the coming of the millennium, at some 
distant period, I am glad you can be sanguine, as a necessary temper of 
mind for making zealous eftbrts. Are you able to extend the warm play 
of this feeling or temperament (if so, I should greatly envy you) to the 
political affairs of our country ? We were in exuberant delight (vain 
dream !) at obtaining the Reform Bill. Even I was so foolish, in spits 
of my desperate conviction of the depravity of human nature. How 
confidently we specified the abuse it would sweep away; the bene¬ 
ficent me.asures, schemes, institutions, it would triumphantly carry into 
effect! 

Well! we have had this grand panacea coming now on eight years, 
and through all this long trial its value and efficacy have been crumbling 
away under a powerful and unremitting process, so complete now in 
system, means, and agency, as to have produced a general conviction 

* Vide Dr, Arnold’s Miscellaneous Works. Letters to ^‘•Hertford 
Reformer” Letter 2, p. 436. Letter .'3, p. 449. Letter 9, p. 466. Letter 
JO, p 470. Letter 14, p. 486. Letter 17, p. 502. “ Centralization,” is 

discussed particularly in Letter 10. 


252 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


that a general election would be the regular funeral of the vaunted bill. 
And what help ? what resource ? there can be nothing even decently 
and distantly approaching to a genuine representative house without the 
ballot, and that we cannot have. 

.... From an account in yesterday’s Morning Chronicle, it seems 
probable that Thorogcod is doomed to die in prison ; one did rather feel 
as if he carried tlie conscientious principle to an extreme. 1 would pay 
the church-rate v/hen legally demanded, as 1 would surrender my money 
to a highwayman, just to escape a greater evil. But still, his suffering 
example may do great good,— will, unless the clergy and their corrupt 
adherents shall resolutely and successfully maintain their detestable 
courts. There is no hateful part of their institutions which they have 
not a thoro^-good will to maintain and perpetuate. 

Has there fallen in your way an “ Essa}'^ on Apostolical Succession,” 
written by Powell, a Wesleyan minister ? It has very speedily come to 
a second edition. Have hardly read any of it yet: but some intelligent 
persons tell me it is very able and effective. Great research is evident on 
the slightest glance. 


CCXIX. TO JAMES FAWCETT, ESQ. 

[On the character of the late Dr. Fawcett.] 

March 12, 1840. 

Your friendly letter ought not to have remained so long unanswered ; 
and would not if I had really felt that my slight, and 1 may now say 
remote, reminiscences of your venerable ancestor could be of any value 
for the description of his character. But they can be but as nothing in 
comparison with what you have had the means of knowing from persons 
associated with him during a large portion of his life ; especially from 
my estimable driend your late father. You must yourself also, up to some 
considerable advance in youth, have been familiarly acquainted with him. 

It is now (oh the flight of time!) nearly forty years since, in a transient 
• visit, I even saw him, and approaching to fifty since I was habitually near 
him. I have never heard any distinct account, and can have no con¬ 
jecture what effect on his character and habits was produced by the 
many experiences of the many years of liis later life, during which I was 
far off and wholly a stranger. 

It is very superfluous to say, that any now surviving person who ever 
spent, as I did, several years in his house, his society, and under his in¬ 
structions, must have retained to this day a deep impression of his ex¬ 
cellence, and not the less so for any recollection of minor points of cha¬ 
racter which they might liave considered as defects. 

His piety was a pervading principle through his whole mind, and went 
into all the practical liabits of his life; it was uniform and rational—by 
which latter epithet I mean that it was accompanied, or rather blended. 



LETTERS. 


253 


with sound judgment—with good seme. His social devotional exercises 
(as in the family worship) were remarkable for solemnity, simplicity, and 
variety, having (at the time I was an attendant on them) no recurrence 
of set phrases, but passing freely into any form oi thought and expression. 
His preaching, always serious, instructive, and pertinent to the subject, 
was yet, I will confess, deficient in what I may call exciting and stimulant 
qualities. It had not bold, prominent ideas, original or striking pas¬ 
sages ; it was considerably of the tenor usually denominated common- 
place. And the manner was not advantageous for attention oi- attraction. 
There was too intense a gravity —an aspect and cast of delivery bearing 
a character of sadness, gloom, and austerity, wliich really had, on young 
))ersons at least, a repressive eflect. The manner might almost i)c de¬ 
nominated funereal. Tliere was nothing assumed or allectcd in all this; 
it was expressive of the preacher’s temperament, which was of a deeply 
sombre color. 

This was felt in social intercourse. His younger friends could not be 
on what I may call companionable terms with him. They were kej't at 
a certain distance by the gravity of his character, which precluded a free, 
uncautious lamiliarity. It is probable, this temperament, perha})s originally 
natural to him, had been much confirmed by severe bodily ailiictions, by 
difficulties and grievances experiented at times in his ministerial course, 
and by a habitually gloomy view (a true one) of the state of the world 
and the depravity of human nature. 

In applying the terms grave, gloomy, austere—I should very specially 
observe that there was nothing acrid or cynical; he had kind affections 
and genuine benevolence ; compassion for distress, a concern for the 
welfare of all with whom he was connected, and delighted in the signs of 
commencing piety, especially in young persons. 

I should have noted (hat at the time I was most with him, he was in 
advanced age, and had long held an acknowledged precedence in re.spect- 
ability and authority to any other minister in all that part of the country. 
This had contrihuted to render him very sensitive, rather morbidly so, 
sometimes, to anything that looked like a deficiency of respect. It was 
not therefore easy to maintain with him anything in the form of a debate. 
He was apt to be hurt by opposition of opinion, as if it were a personal 
disrespect, and could not go into a free discussion on the equal condition 
♦)f “ give and take.” He was not arrogant and dictatorial; by no means : 
but he felt dissent or opposition as of the nature of an offence, and brood¬ 
ed over it with a painful irritation. I do not think he attributed to him- , 
self extraordinary talent, or deemed his writings as above the level of 
plain performances, aimed to do good. But he would have been aggriev¬ 
ed by any remarks of the nature of animadversion. I remember when 
he was about printing his Family Bible, he sent to me, at a great dis¬ 
tance, the first two or three printed sheets, with a request for any ob¬ 
servations that might occur to me. But I did not—really felt that I 
dared not—venture any remarks to the effect of indicating faults. 


254 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


It was the wish of some of his friends, myself included, that he had 
more limited himself in the matter of authorship. He was, at the same 
time, very free from ostentation of himself in that capacity. He rarely 
and but briefly made any reference to the works he published. 

He had a lively perception, and was liberal and animated in praise, of 
the merits of other authors, whether contemporary, or of older date. 

Considering that the order of his religious principles and feelings was 
so much according to what might be called the 'puritanical standard, it 
was remarkable how little contracted were his taste and compass of 
reading. He read with pleasure any sort of books that were good of 
their kind—history, poetry, fiction, even romance. I remember at this 
distance of time, a conversation on one of Fielding^s novels, his discri¬ 
minating observations on which showed how attentively and with what 
interest he had read it. 

Considering also his tendency to gloom and sadness, it was remarkable 
what a lively perception he had of wit and humor. A short but genuine 
laugh would show how instantly and with what pleasure he took it. I 
recollect his even lending himself, in a sly, quiet way, to humor a prac¬ 
tical joke, rather at the expense of Mrs. F., on some occasion of a vio¬ 
lent and mistaken fret. 

He was far from discouraging vivacity in the young people around him, 
to any extent short of absolute folly. 

In short, as a comprehensive observation on all these miscellaneous 
particulars, he had in all ways a candid and liberal feeling, as amiable 
as it was remarkable in a person of his temperament. Or if there should 
appear to be some exception to this in what I have described of his un¬ 
fortunate sensitiveness to opposition—his aptitude to feel any sign of dis¬ 
agreement as a deficiency of respect—let it be remembered that there 
was in this feeling no harshness, bitterness, or disposition to inflict pain 
in return. It was simply his own painful feeling, without hostile reac¬ 
tion; and he was easily conciliated, when shown that there was no in¬ 
tention to hurt or displease him. . 

One virtue was pre-eminently his—indefatigable industry. This some¬ 
times made me ashamed when with him, and many times in remembrance 
since. Every part of every day, the whole year round, he was busy in 
some useful employment. The only observable interval would be, that 
he would sometimes sit at ease smoking his pipe for a quarter of an 
hour. He took much pleasure in bookbinding; but while employed in 
folding, stitching, &.C., he would always have some one (often myself) 
employed in reading to him, for the benefit of both. During this exer¬ 
cise his large, various knowledge would afford many useful points of in¬ 
formation or comment. He did not care what the book was, if there 
was anything valuable in it. His favorite author at that time was Dr. 
Johnson. 

The above, dear sir, is a very meagre sketch ; I wish my memory had 
been more faithful. The time referred to has greatly faded on its page 


LETTERS. 


255 


of record. But it will, to the end of life, retain, faithfully engraven, the 
general lines of a character of extraordinary excellence. From such 
a character there will be but little detracted by such particulars as I 
have ventured to remark as weaknesses or defects. He was one of 
the few individuals wlio in that period (at least the earlier part of it), 
and in that part of the country, were conspicuous as holding fortli the 
light of evangelical religion, and as doing honor to the cause of dissent. 
By many more than his descendants his character will be long held in 
veneration. 

P.S. I might have noticed that Dr. Fawcett’s 'personal presence was 
uncommonly imposing and authoritative. His saturnine countenance, 
the habitual seriousness of his look, his powerful voice, his large and 
tall figure, and a certain unconscious dignity in his measured step, would 
have made on even a stranger an impression of something very different 
from an ordinary person. 


CCXX. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Bourton, July 9, 1840. 

.... If one could (may God do what we cannot!) raise the minds 
of young persons, to a most decided state of conviction, resolution, exer¬ 
tion, and habitual solicitation of help from Heaven, as to the grand pur¬ 
pose and effectual improvement of life ! If they could but fully anticipate 
the feelings which are brought so imperatively into the mind on a near 
approach of the end of life, combined with reflection on life in its re¬ 
view ! How often one regrets the impossibility of imparting to youth 
some of the gravest thoughts and feelings of age. But yet they can, 
and happily some of them do, consider that life is passing fast away, that 
the one grand purpose of it, as a whole, is the proper purpose of each 
and every part—that at any advanced point of it, it is very lamentable to 
have to look back on the past stage as lost to the great object—that the 
race of time to the middle term of life is comparatively short—that in 
passing down to the decline, every year will seem shorter (according to 
the concurrent testimony of their senior.s) than the preceding—that there 
is the constant menacing possibility of the career being prematurely 
closed—that “ even the longest day will have an end,”—and then—what 
then? 


CCXXI. REV. B. S. HALL. 

Bourton, July 17, 1840. 

Dear old Friend, —. . . . What times and events have passed away 
since Clapton was one of the places—the most pleasant of the places— 
of friendly resort. I have looked up that way with a degree of regret, 
that the ancient attraction thither exists there no more, and in all proba¬ 
bility never will again. 






256 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


I am glad to believe that your 'present position is a more useful one 
than any former. How utterly improbable it would have appeared, in 
that long passed time to which I have referred, that your appointment in 
Providence should be where it has now placed you,—and where I trust 
its merciful favor will abide with you and your family. 

The change's and varieties in your past life will have been a profitable 
discipline for your present vocation, as having given you much experi¬ 
ence of human nature and character in its varieties of good and evil. 
N umberless things will be suggested from your own practical knowledge 
in aid of those illustrations and instructions which you have to adminis¬ 
ter to your people. I always consider it an advantage to a preacher, if 
an observant and reflective man, to have passed through some changes 
of situation and acquaintance with mankind. I should much like to 
hear you state some of the results of your now long and diversified ex¬ 
perience,—the judgments you have been led to form on divers matters 
on which we have conversed in years far gone, or which have come in 
your way during the subsequent course of our lives. 


CCXXII. TO THE REV. W. PEECHEY. 

[On the Millennium.] 

Stapleton, 1840. 

My dear Sir,— Your letter would not have remained unacknowledged 
so unconscionable a length of time, or any considerable length of time, 
if I could have given myself credit for being able to write five sentences 
to the purpose on the subject of it. But in truth I have never been led 
to think particidarly on that subject. 

The study of prophecy (as to yet future ages) has carried ingenious 
and learned men into so many theories and fantastic presumptions, many 
of them already convicted of folly, that I have never had faith enough 
for it, except as to a few apparently infallible passages—such as the 
return of the Jews to their ancient land, and the happy dispensation (call 
it millennium) reserved to shine on this dark world some time —but w’hen ? 
for how very faint are the signs that as yet glimmer on the horizon! 
At the rate of the progress hitherto of genuine Christianity on the globe, 
thousands of years may pass away before that millennium can arrive—■ 
an awful mystery in the divine government. But one cannot help in¬ 
dulging a hope, though resting on a loose and arbitrary speculation, that 
there may come in some not very distant period, a mighty acceleration, 
with unprecedented and astonishing events, of the reforming process. 
If asked the reason of such a hope, the answer might be little more 
than this—that unless it shall be so, the world is doomed to an awfully 
protracted duration of its past and present dismal state; which one is 
most extremely unwilling to believe. 

It may be well for stimulated exertion to entertain a very exaggerated 



LETTERS. 


267 


estimate of what is seen and is doing at present. But often one is im 
vaded with a chilling sentiment in hearing the elFusions of our own 
good men, when they speak of the zealous operations, and the compara¬ 
tively diminutive though welcome successes, as if actually the moral 
world were rapidly changing under our sight, as the physical is in this 
\ernal season. 

But as to the particular subject of your letter—the inspired predictions 
of the happy age which is some time to come on the world, are so strong, 
and so much in the apparent language of universality, as to allow a 
confidence, that literally all the human race will tlien be under the power 
of the •true religion,—wore it not for a dark shade of doubt arising from 
another quarter of prophecy. 

The happy season anticipated and promised must be that of one thou¬ 
sand years of the x\pocalypse, during which the influence of infernal power 
will be banished or restrained. But then what takes place at the ter¬ 
mination of that blessed period ? A tremendous combination and insur¬ 
rection of wicked men, in countless multitude, so bold and fierce in 
depravity, as to conspire for the destruction of tiie saints. Now the 
plain question is, how comes this to be }>ossible ? Whence this multi¬ 
tude of wicked human beings ,—so wicked, as to aim at the destruction 
of the righteous,—and so numerous, as to be confident of effecting it, 
perhaps reasonably confident according to ordinary calculation, since to 
defeat them requires a direct divine interposition, “fire from heaven?” 

Either there must have remained, during the happy period, a very 
considerable portion of the earth’s inhabitants unsubdued to the kingdom 
of Christ, in spirit hostile to it and its subjects,—or, if all are good 
thoroughly, and to the conclusion of the prolonged period, there must 
then take place a frightful apostasy, among them or their descendants. 
And it would seem a little time will suffice to bring this grand eruption 
of evil; since it appears to be spoken of a contemporary of Satan’s 
“ being loosed for a little season.” 

Which part of the alternative is the more probable—or rather the 
less improbable I for the phenomenon is in any way marvellously strange 
—yet plainly and literally -a fact, if we may at all pretend to know when 
])rophecy means a literal fact. 

As to the fact of there being a sad prevalence of irreligion at the 
conclusion of the world, it seems more than implied by such a passage 
as 1 Thess. ii., 3, “ When they shall say peace and safety.” Probably 
also by Revelations i., 7, “ Wail,” &c. The same might be said of our 
Lord’s own predictions, if we could be certain to distinguish between 
what referred to the end of the world, and what was limited to the de¬ 
struction of Jerusalem. 

But the alternative. I confess I am quite at fault for an opinion, or a 
presumption, whether it be more likely that, during a long succession 
of centuries and generations, in defiance of such an illustrious mani¬ 
festation and prevalence of Christianity, as may be denominated i\\Q reign 

VOL. II. IB 


258 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


of Christ and his saints on earth (in accomplishment of the promise, 
“ The heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for his possession”), there can remain a very considerable portion of the 
race, anywhere on the globe in obstinate resistance ; or, on the other 
hand, that speedily after the comjdetion of a certain number of those 
centuries, in spite of the mighty power which will have been acquired 
by truth and righteousness, by virtue of long and universal prevalence 
(to say nothing of the continuance of divine interposition), there can be 
a desperate, furious, and wide extended apostasy. Either phenomenon 
confounds one’s faculty of thought. One might suggest one considera¬ 
tion, which may be called economical. Would it not be a greater sum 
of gain (so to denominate it) to the kingdom of Christ, for the whole 
world—for all men—to have belonged to it through so many Siges, though 
followed by such an apostasy, than for a considerable or large portion of 
the race to have stood out all that time, and to break forth at last into 
active rebellion ? We have to consider also the radical depravity of 
human nature, not essentially abrogated., but only counteracted, repressed, 
and corrected by divine influence even during the happy ages. If there 
should, for a mysterious reason in the divine'government, be a suspension 
of that influence taken together with a renewed permission (according 
to the prediction) of the infernal influence, we may imagine the possi¬ 
bility of a speedy and dreadful change in at least an immediately suc¬ 
ceeding generation. 

Taking this into consideration, and at the same, considering the cha¬ 
racter of unuersality in the language predicting the happy period in 
prospect, 1 should incline to the hope that literally all mankind will then 
be the genuine subjects of Christ. 

I cannot expect that these slight and sceptical surmises should give 
you any satisfaction. I shall be glad if you gain by some better mode 
of inquiry. We shall leave this dark and miserable world very long 
before the arrival of the commencement of the bright era,—even you 
will, though young; yet 1 hope you will live to see some highly favor¬ 
able and exhilarating change. But may Heaven grant us to attain a 
far happier state of existence elsewhere, than that of mortals can bo 
even in the Millennium ! . . . . 


CCXXIII. TO JOHN PURSER, ESQ. 

Stapleton, July 29, 1840. 

j.vlv DEAR Sir, —Some time within the three weeks that I have been 
on a visit to some old friends and relations in a distant place, which 1 
had not seen for a considerable number of years, and may not see again, 
Mrs. W. had the kindness to call here, and (as I was told, she had sig¬ 
nified), at your request, to make a friendly inquiry. While I was truly 
gratifled by this, I was reproachfully reminded, once again, and for much 




LETTERS. 


259 


more than the thousandth time, of my vice of procrastination. Thai 
is the modified form of delinquency to which I do honestly refer many 
of my sins of omission, and certainly the one now in question, rather 
than to a worse moral account. Do not you, under the universal law of 
self-love, always assign any few faults that you have to the most mili- 
gated species of culpability ? If you do not, it would go fiir to prove that 
those faults are few, and are very venial, which indeed I am most willing 
to believe. I have no doubt I should have testimony to this gratifying fact 
from Mrs. P. and six other primary, and I know not liow many second¬ 
ary, witnesses of most competent knowledge, and surely I may add my¬ 
self. 

.... Many weeks since, a newspaper under your envelope, indi¬ 
cated to me that I was not forgotten amidst the domestic pleasures and 
varieties at Rathmines Castle, a scene unknown to me locally, to which 
I have often transferred my imagination from scenes which I did know in 
times now so far gone into the past, but very often recalled in pleasing 
but pensive memory. The times and seasons I can well, even vividly, 
recall, but not myself as I then was. 1 can almost as little carry myself 
back to realize my then state of feelings, as I can identify you as you 
now are, with you as you then were. For myself, I say with a sigh of 
deep regret, “If all the change effected by time had but been for the 
better!” But the evil things that cleave to, or rather were in this de¬ 
praved nature, are the things that least give way to the changing opera¬ 
tions of time.A strange feeling arises at the confronted looks of 

persons mutually and distinctly recollecting what those looks were at a 
distance of time greater than the average duration of human life, when 
there has been no meeting in the interval to graduate as it were the ap¬ 
pearance and perception of change. What a thing it would be if the 
souls could be made as plainly visible as the visages, in a comparison 
between their early and their actual state. For myself, while acknow¬ 
ledging that early state to have been far, very far indeed from what it 
ought to have been, I have to acknowledge also that it would require ex¬ 
treme hardihood to make or allow a full, plain exhibition of the present 
state, as in comparison to the view of a judicial, moral, and religious 
observer. “ What!” he would say, “ this—only this —after an interval 
of forty years for correction and improvement, with means, advantages, 
and monitions innumerable, and convictions and even good resolutions 
endlessly repeated ?” I might well be in haste to close up the miserable 
spectacle against farther inspection, confining it thenceforward to my 
own conscious reflection. But no; it cannot be so confined ; there is ano¬ 
ther Inspector and Judge ! A solemn and alarming thought; when I con¬ 
sider what might and should have been effected in this long interval, and 
the miserable account of what has been, adverting in addition to what I 
believe and know to have been accomplished in the mind and the life of 
some of my better and wiser fellow-mortals and co-evals. I should be 
sunk in the profoundest melancholy, but for the grand sole resource of 



260 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the divine mercy as set forth in the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mediator. 
I often think what a state of feeling mine would be, under a disbelief of 
this doctrine. And much I wonder how the rejectors of the doctrine, 
unless they have a lofty opinion of their own merits, can endure to look 
forward to the future account, in appearing before the supreme and 
righteous .Judge. I never recollect our friend Mrs. O. without great re¬ 
gret for what you have told me of her religious faith, in which, however, 
you said, I think, that she professes to feel confident and complacent, 
even in the face of that perfect law, which exacts an absolute confor¬ 
mity, without failure or defect, as the condition of acceptance for those 
who refuse to plead the atonement made by “ the Lamb of God who taketli 
away the sin of the world.” Let us be thankful for not having been 

Bufiered to be misled into so disastrous an order of religious opinions. 

.... For Ireland we have been in extreme alarm during the agita¬ 
tion of Lord Stanley’s detestable bill, the threatened success of which 
would have rekindled all the inflammable passions of your island. You 
have had Dan., I see, about you at Rathmines, lately. He is the man I 
should be more curious to see and hear than any other individual in the 
world whom I have not seen. There is not, in the whole world, any 
other person who has so much moral power, in virtue solely of the indi¬ 
vidual’s own personal qualities. Our reformers, you may be sure, set a 
very high value on his agency and co-operation —to a certain extent —but 
totally disown him in his wild project of “ repealreally cannot under¬ 
stand how he can imagine the practicabilit}", or how he can foresee in the 
actual attempt anything less fearful than a civil war. 


CCXXIV. TO MRS. STOKES. 

Stapleton, Dec. 7, 1840. 

My dear old Friend, —. .... You can retrace almost number¬ 
less circumstances, occurrences, points of time, situations at home and 
at a distance, all combining to tell the value of a relationship, which it 
has pleased the heavenly Father to dissolve—to dissolve as to the present 
world ; but leaving a delightful anticipation of what shall be recovered 
in another. 

In the recollection of that long course of associated life, you have the 
consolation of reflecting that it was a journey in the right direction for a 
better world, that thus it had not solely its present satisfactions in each 
passing stage, but had its value with respect to hereafter. You will 
think with gratitude of the vast difference between this and a case of 
separation, in which the survivor has the melancholy consideration that 
the now terminated course of united life had nothing in it tending to a 
happy future; nothing to excite the joyful hope of a delightful meeting 
again; that whatever satisfactions and advantages it had, they all be¬ 
longed exclusively to the time in wfliich they w’ere possessed, wmre all 





LETTERS. 


261 


confined to the interest of the present world, and are therefore now in all 
senses gone and lost, leaving nothing to carry the desolate mind forward 
in anticipation of a blessed sequel elsewhere. You will have pleasure 
too, in considering how soon, comparatively, at so advanced an age, you 
may expect that the future you are looking forward to will become pre¬ 
sent, and restore to you, in a far higher condition of excellence and 
felicity, what you are now mourning as taken away from you for a 
while. 


CCXXV. TO THE EDITOR. 

London, July 17 and 20, 1S4J. 

My dear Sir,— .I do most truly thank you for your kind in¬ 

vitation, which, supposing the case exactly your own, you would feel 
yourself under an inhibition to avail yourself of. Imagine yourself to 
have been more weeks than you could reckon, and which you were re¬ 
luctant to try to reckon, absent from your habitat, workshop, and domes¬ 
tic associates, spending a long succession of days in just sidling about to 
sec sights for much of the time, and rambling through the Isle of Wight 
the rest of it,—having exceeded, by at least an entire month, the time 
you had intended when you left home—having three or four times even 
told the people there that you were on the point of returning; having not 
even what would turn to sixpenny-worth of account—and having be¬ 
come weeks since desperately asliamed of your course of life—in such a 
predicament you would be forced to say, “ No, much as I should like to 
see my good old friends, I must not and cannot for shame, take such a 
new license for dissipation; the pleasure of the interview would be in¬ 
terfered with by the consciousness that I had no business to be there.” 

.... I should have delayed coming hither till after the bustling 
season but for the unpleasant cause of coming at all—my anxiety to ob¬ 
tain professional advice for some morbid symptom on my only remain¬ 
ing ear (the other having declined its office many years since.) My 
apprehension of more than the possibility of wholly losing the services of 
the one that has remained faithful hitherto, and by which I have con¬ 
tinued to get on tolerably for the last dozen years, is much alleviated by 
an assurance from the highest professional authority that there is not 
serious cause for such apprehension. 

The removal of your brother to a scene and a condition of existence 
how transcendantly different! excited a pensive emotion in those of us 
who had seen him excited and animated in a social hour, even while 
confined to his bed. But another feeling mingled and even predomi¬ 
nated—that which congratulated him in thought on his blessed ex¬ 
change. In attending his quiet funeral (just such a (me as I should 
wish for myself) I thought of the difference between such a close of 
life, such a calm aftectionate conveyance of the remains to the grave, 
and such a sequel elsewhere, as compared with the death and pompous 
obsequies of some wicked, proud monarch or conqueror. 




262 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


.... It is odd I should not, till now, have been reminded of 'political 
matters. Sad state of things—to result at no distant time, according to 
the auguries I am in the way of hearing, in great and perhaps terrific 
national calamity. No doubt God has a fearful controversy with a na¬ 
tion on the whole so irreligious and so immoral; and the infliction a 
bad government bears strongly the marks of vengeance. 

. . . *. Besides the variety of sights, exhibitions, &c., to which I have 
paid a competent attention, I have necessarily become a little acquainted 
with some matters and things not unreservedly let out through the gene¬ 
ral public channels. The general etfect of such information is, that the 
state of society is bad—bad beyond anything that even axynical judge 
of human nature would antecedently surmise. A total want of moral 
principle in the vast majority of figuring persons is a very sad phenome¬ 
non. This is proved against one after another of them, even of Some that 
one might have been disposed to think tolerably well of. A minor ar¬ 
raignment is, that of all sorts of perversity, folly, and absurdity, of opinion 
and prejudice; and religion! there might be no such thing recognized 
as in existence, except as an object of jeering reference, as embodied in 
a church and parsons. When I say “ jeering,” I speak of the clever 
fellows of the “liberal” party, some of them in parliament, others the 
journalists, the literary adventurers, political economists, &c. A life 
spent much in the company of this sort of people would be very inju¬ 
rious to a man’s personal religion. 

.... In the first triumph of having obtained the Reform Bill, what 
augur would not have been scouted as an idiot, who had predicted that 
ten years of its operation would end in such an election as this ! 

I hope I shall be just able, after such an interval, to recognize the 
countenances of our few Bristol friends when I meet them again. I am 
saying “ few ;”—to me how very few, after the removals by death, and 
that gradual declining out of society, which has of late years been in¬ 
creasing my insulation. I earnestly wish that my diminishing commu¬ 
nication with men may be replaced by more communication with 
Heaven. 

Still, and again, and ever, wishing every blessing that such an imper¬ 
fect state as this mortal sojourn must ever be, can admit, to yourself and 
Mrs. R., I remain, my dear sir, 

Most truly yours, 

J. Foster. 


CCXXVI. TO A YOUNG MINISTER. 

[In answer to one in which he stated his inquiries and difficulties on the subject of tne 
eternity of future punishments.] 

September 24, 1841. 

Dear Sir, —If you could have been apprised how much less research 
I have made into what has been written on the subject of your letter than 




LETTERS. 


263 


you appear to have done, you would have had little expectation of assist¬ 
ance in deciding your judgment. 1 have perliaps been too content to let 
an opinion (or impression) admitted in early life dispense with protracted 
inquiry and various reading. The general, not very far short of universal, 
judgment of divines in affirmation of the doctrine of eternal punishment 
must be acknowledged a weighty consideration. It is a very fair ques¬ 
tion, is it likely that so many thousands of able, learned, benevolent, and 
pious men should all have been in error ? And the language of scrip¬ 
ture is formidably strong ; so strong that it must be an argument of ex¬ 
treme cogency that would authorize a limited interpretation. 

Nevertheless, I acknowledge myself not convinced of the orthodox 
doctrine. If asked w]iij not ?—I should have little to say in the way of 
criticism, of implications found or sought in what may be called inci¬ 
dental expressions of scripture, or of the passages dubiously cited in 
favor of final, universal restitution. It is the moral argument, as it may 
be named, that presses irresistibly on my mind—that which comes in 
the stupendous idea of eternity. 

It appears to me that the teachers and believers of the orthodox doc¬ 
trine hardly ever make an earnest, strenuous effort to form a conception 
of eternity; or rather a conception somewhat of the nature of a faint 
incipient, approximation. Because it is confessedly beyond the compass 
of thought it is suffered to go without an attempt at thinking of it. 
They utter the term in the easy currency of language; have a vague 
and transitory idea of something obscurely vast, and do not labor to 
place and detain the mind in intense protracted contemplation, seeking 
all expedients for expanding and aggravating the awful import of such 
a word. Though every mode of illustration is feeble and impotent, one 
would surely think there would be an insuppressible impulse to send 
forth the thoughts to the utmost possible reach into the immensity— 
when it is an immensity into which our own most essential interests are 
infinitely extended. Truly it is very strange that even religious minds 
can keep so quietly aloof from the amazing, the overwhelming contempla¬ 
tion of what they have the destiny and the near prospect of entering upon. 

Expedients of illustration of what eternity is no/, supply the best at¬ 
tainable means of assisting remotely toward a glimmering apprehension 
of what it is. All that is within human capacity is to imagine the vast¬ 
est measures of /me, and to look to the termination of these as only 
touching the mere commencement of eternity. 

For example : it has been suggested* to imagine the number of parti¬ 
cles, atoms, contained in this globe, and suppose them one by one anni¬ 
hilated, each in a thousand years, till all were gone ; but just as well 
say, a million, or a million of millions of years or ages, it is all the same 
as agaimst infinite duration. 

Extend the thought of such a process to our whole mundane system, 
and finally to the whole material universle : it is still the same. Or, ima- 

* In the Spectator I think. (No. 575, Monday^ 'dug. 2, 1714.—Ed. 


264 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


gine a series of numerical figures, in close order, extended to a line of 
such a length that it would encircle the globe, like the equator—or that 
would run along with the earth’s orbit round the sun—or with the out¬ 
ermost planet, Uranus—or that it would draw a circle of which the ra¬ 
dius should be from the earth or sun to Sirius—or that should encompass 
the entire material universe, which, as being material, cannot be infinite. 
The most stupendous of these measure of time would have an end ; and 
would, when completed, be still nothing to eternity. 

Now think 'of an infliction of misery protracted through such a period, 
and at the end of it being only commencing, —not one smallest step nearer 
a conclusion :—the case just the same if that sum of figures were multi¬ 
plied by itself. And then think of man —his nature, his situation, the 
circumstances of his brief sojourn and trial on earth. Far be it from us 
to make light of the demerit of sin, and to remonstrate with the supreme 
Judge against a severe chastisement, of whatever moral nature Vve may 
regard the infliction to be. But still, what is man ?—He comes into the 
world with a nature fatally corrupt, and powerfully tending to actual evil. 
He comes among a crowd of temptations adapted to his innate evil pro¬ 
pensities. He grow’s up (incomparably the greater proportion of the 
race) in great ignorance ; his judgment weak, and under numberless 
beguilements into error; while his passions and appetites are strong; 
liis conscience unequally matched against their power;—in the majority 
of men, but feebly and rudely constituted. The influence of whatever 
good instructions he may receive is counteracted by a combination of 
opposite influences almost constantly acting on him. He is essentially 
and inevitably unapt to be powerfully acted on by what is invisible and 
future. In addition to all which, there is the intervention and activity 
of the great tempter and destroyer. In short, his condition is such that 
there is no hope of him, but from a direct, special operation on him of 
what we denominate grace. Is it not so ? are we not convinced— is it 
not the plain doctrine of scripture—is there not irresistible evidence from 
a view of the actual condition of the human world,—that no man can 
become good, in the Christian sense, can become fit for a holy and happy 
place hereafter, but by this operation ah extra ? But this is arbitrary and 
discriminative on the part of the sovereign Agent, and independent of 
the will of man. And how awfully evident is it, that this indispensable 
operation takes place only on a comparatively small proportion of the 
collective race ! 

Now this creature, thus constituted and circumstanced, passes a few 
fleeting years on earth, a short sinful course ; in which he does often 
what, notwithstanding his ignorance and ill-disciplined judgment and 
conscience, he knows to be wrong, and neglects what he knows to be 
his duty ; and consequently, for a greater or less measure of guilt, widely 
different in different offenders, deserves punishment. But endless punish¬ 
ment ! hopeless misery, through a duration to which the enormous terms 
above imagined, will be absolutely nothing ! I acknowledge my inability 


LETTERS. 


265 


(I would say it reverently) to admit, this belief, together with a belief in 
the divine goodness—the belief that “ God is love,” that his tender mer- 
cies are over all his works. Goodness, benevolence, charity, as ascribed 
in supreme perfection to him, cannot mean a quality foreign to all human 
conceptions of goodness ; it must be something analogous in principle to 
what himself has defined and required as goodness in his moral crea¬ 
tures, that, in adoring the divine goodness, we may not be worshipping 
an “ unknown God.” But if so, how would all our ideas be confounded, 
while contemplating him bringing, of his own sovereign will, a race of 
creatures into existence, in such a condition that they certainly will and 
must, 7rnist, by their nature and circumstances, go wrong, and be mise¬ 
rable unless prevented by especial grace,—which is the privilege of 
only a small proportion of them, and at the same time affixing on their 
delinquency a doom of which it is infinitely beyond the highest arch¬ 
angel’s faculty to apprehend a thousandth part of the horror. 

It must be in deep humility that we venture to apply to the measures 
of the divine government, the rules indispensable to the equity of human 
administration. Yet we may advert to the principle in human legisla¬ 
tion, that the man tempted to crime should, as far as is possible without 
actual experience, be apprised of the nature and measure of the penal 
consequence. It should be something the main force of which can be 
placed in intelligible opposition, so to speak, to the temptation. If it be 
something totally out of the scope of his faculties to apprehend, to re¬ 
alize to his mind, that threatened something is unknown, has not its 
appropriate fitness to deter him. There is, or may be, in it what would 
be of mighty force to deter him if he could have a competent notion of it; 
but his necessary ignorance precludes from him that salutary force. Is 
he not thus taken at a fearful disadvantage ? As a motive to deter him 
the threatened penalty can only be in the proportion to his (in the present 
case) narrow faculty of apprehending it; but as an evil to be suffered it 
surpasses in magnitude every intellect but the Omniscient. Might we 
not imagine the reflection of one of the condemned delinquents suffering 
on, and still interminably on, through a thousand or a million of ages, 
to be expressed in some such manner as this :—Oh! if it had been 
possible for me to conceive but the most diminutive part of the weight 
and horror of this doom, every temptation to sin would have been enough 
to strike me dead with terror; I should have shrunk from it with the 
most violent recoil. 

A common argument has been that sin is an infinite evil, that is, of 
infinite demerit, as an offence against an infinite Being; and that since 
a finite creatui*e cannot suffer infinitely in measure, he must in duration. 
But surely, in all reason, the limited and in the present instance diminu¬ 
tive nature of the criminal must be an essential part of the case for judg¬ 
ment. Every act must, for one of its proportions, be measured by the 
nature and condition of the agent. And it would seem that one princi¬ 
ple in that rule of proportion should be, that the offending agent should 


266 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


be capable of being aware of the magnitude (the amount, if we might 
use such a word) of the offence he commits, by being capable of some¬ 
thing like an adequate conception of the being against whom it is com¬ 
mitted. A perverse child committing an oftence against a great monarch, 
of whose dignity it had some, but a vastly inadequate, apprehension, 
would not be punished in the same manner as an offender of high en¬ 
dowments and responsibility, and fully aware of the dignity of the per¬ 
sonage offended. The one would justly be sharply chastised; the other 
might as justly be condemned to death. In the present case, the offender 
does or may know that the Being offended against is of awful majesty ; 
and therefore the offence is one of great aggravation, and he will justly 
be punished with great severity; but, by his extremely contracted and 
feeble faculties, as the lowest in the scale of strictly rational and ac¬ 
countable creatures in the whole creation, he is infinitely incapable of 
any adequate conception of the greatness of the Being offended against. 
He is, then, according to the argument, obnoxious to a punishment not 
in any proportion to his own nature, but alone to that infinity of the su¬ 
preme nature, which is to him infinitely unconceivable and unknown. 

If an evil act of a human being may be of infinite demerit, why may 
not a good one be of infinite excellence or merit as having also a refer¬ 
ence to the infinite Being ? Is it not plain that every act of a finite 
nature must have, in all senses, the finite quality of that nature—cannot, 
therefore, be of infinite demerit ? 

Can we—I would say with reverence—can we realize it as possible 
that a lost soul, after countless millions of ages, and in prospect of an 
interminable succession of such enormous periods, can be made to have 
the conviction, absolute and perfect, that all this is a just, an equitable 
infliction, and from a Power as good as he is just, for a few short sinful 
years on earth—years and sins presumed to be retained most vividly in 
memory, and everlastingly growing clearer, vaster, and more terrible to 
retrospective view in their magnitude of infinite evil—every stupendous 
period of duration, by which they have actually been left at a distance, 
seeming to bring them, in contrariety to all laws of memory, nearer and 
ever nearer to view, by the continually aggravated experience of their 
consequences ? 

Yes, those twenty, forty, seventy years, growing up to infinity of 
horror in the review, in proportion to the distance which the condemned 
spirit recedes from them ;—all eternity not sufficing to reveal fully what 
those years contained!—millions of ages for each single evil thought 
or word! 

But it is usually alleged that there will be an endless continuance of 
sinning, with probably an endless aggravation, and therefore the punish¬ 
ment must be endless. Is not this like an admission of disproportion 
between the punishment and the original cause of its infliction ?—But 
suppose the case to be so,—that is to say, that the punishment is not 
a retribution simply for the guilt of the momentary existence on earth. 



LETTERS. 


267 


but a continued punishment of the continued, ever-aggravated g^iilt in 
the eternal state ; the allegation is of no avail in vindication of the 
doctrine; because the first consignment to the dreadful state necessi¬ 
tates a continuance of the criminality; the doctrine teaching that it is of 
the essence, and is an awful aggravation, of the original consignment, 
that it dooms the condemned to maintain the criminal spirit unchanged 
for ever. The doom to sin as well as to suffer, and according to the 
argument, to sin in order to suffer, is infficted as the punishment of the 
sin committed in the mortal state. Virtually, therefore, the eternal 
punishment is the punishment of the sins of time. 

Under the light (or tlie darkness) of this doctrine, how inconceivably 
mysterious and awful is the aspect of the whole economy of this human 
world ! The immensely greater number of the race hitherto, through 
all ages and regions, passing a shiDrt life under no illuminating, trans¬ 
forming influence of their Creator; ninety-nine in a hundred of them 
perhaps having never even received any authenticated message from 
heaven ; passing off* the world in a state unfit for a spiritual, heavenly, 
and happy kingdom elsewhere; and all destined to everlasting misery. 
The thoughtful spirit has a question silently suggested to it of far more 
emphatic import than that of him who exclaimed, “ Hast thou made all 
men in vain V’ 

Even the dispensation of redemption by the Mediator, the only light 
that shines through tliis dark economy,—how profoundly mysterious in 
its slow progress, as yet, in its uncorrupted purity, and saving efficacy. 
What proportion of the earth’s inhabitants are, at this hour, the subjects 
of its vital agency ? It was not the divine volition that the success 
should be greater,—that a greater number should be saved by it,—or 
most certainly, most necessarily, its efficacy would have been greater. 
But in thus withholding from so large a proportion mankind even the 
knowledge, and from so vast a majority in the nominally Christian na¬ 
tions the divine application, indispensable to the efficacy ot the Christian 
dispensation, could it be that the divine purpose was to consign so many 
of his creatures, existing under such fearful circumstances, to the doom 
of eternal misery ? Does the belief consist with any conception we can 
form of infinite goodness combined with infinite power ? 

But, after all this, we have to meet the grave question, What say the 
Scriptures ? There is a force in their expressions at which we well may 
tremble. On no allowable interpretation do they signify less than a 
very protracted duration and formidable severity. But I hope it is not 
presumptuous to take advantage of the fact, that the terms everlasting, 
eternal, for ever, original or translated, are often employed in the Bible, 
as well as other writings, under great and various limitations of import; 
and are thus withdrawn from the predicament of necessarily and abso¬ 
lutely meaning a strictly endless duration. The limitation is often, in¬ 
deed, plainly marked by the nature of the subject. In other instances 
the words are used with a figurafi ve indefiniteness, which leaves the 


268 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


Jimitation to be made by some general rule of reason and proportion. 
They are designed to magnify, to aggravate, rather than to define. My 
resource in the present case, then, is simply this—that since the terms 
do not necessarily and absolutely signify an interminable duration,—and 
since there is in the present instance to be pleaded, for admitting a limited 
interpretation, a reason in the moral estimate of things, of stupendous, 
of infinite urgency, involving our conceptions of the divine goodness and 
equity, and leaving those conceptions overwhelmed in darkness and 
horror if it be rejected, I therefore conclude that a limited interpretation 
is authorized. Perhaps there is some pertinence in a suggestion which 
I recollect to have seen in some old and nearly unknown book in favor 
of universal restitution;—that the great difference of degrees of future 
punishment, so plainly stated in Scripture, affords an argument against 
its perpetuity; since, if the demerit be infinite, there can be no place for 
a scale of degrees, apportioning a minor infliction to some offenders 
every one should be punished up to the utmost that his nature can sus¬ 
tain ; and the same reason of equity there may be for a limited measure, 
there may consistently be for a limited duration. The assignment of an 
unlimited duration would seem an abandonment of the principle of the 
discriminating rule observed in the adjustment of degrees. 

If it be asked, hoio could the doctrine have been more plainly and posi¬ 
tively asserted than it is in the Scripture language ? In answer, I ask, 
how do zoe construct our words and sentences to express it in an abso¬ 
lute manner, so as to leave no possibility of understanding the language 
in a different, equivocal, or questionable sense ? And may we not think 
that if so transcendently dreadful a doctrine had been meant to be 
stamped as in burning characters on our faith, there would have been 
such forms of proposition, of circumlocution if necessary, as would have 
rendered all doubt or question a mere palpable absurdity ? 

Some intelligent and devout inquirers, unable to admit the terrific doc¬ 
trine, and yet pressed by the strength of the scripture language^ have 
had recourse to a literal interpretation of the threatened destruction, the 
eternal death, as signifying annihilation of existence, after a more or less 
protracted penal infliction. Even this would be a prodigious relief: but 
it is an admission that the terms in question do mean something final, in 
an absolute sense. I have not directed much thought to this point; the 
grand object of interest being a negation of the perpetuity of misery. I 
have not been anxious for any satisfaction beyond that; though certainly 
one would wish to indulge the hope, founded on the divine attribute of 
infinite benevolence, that there will be a period somewhere in the endless 
futurity, when all God’s sinning creatures will be restored by him to rec¬ 
titude and happiness. 

It often surprises me tha.t the fearful doctrine sits, if I may so express 
it, so easy on the minds of the religious and benevolent believers of it. 
Surrounded immediately by the multitudes of fellow-mortals, and looking 
abroad on the present, and back on the past state of the race, and regard- 


LETTERS. 


269 


ing them, as to the immense majority, as subjects of so direful destina¬ 
tion, how can tliey have any calm enjoyment of life, how can they be 
cordially cheerful, how can they escape the incessant haunting of dismal 
ideas, darkening the economy in which their lot is cast ? I remember 
suggesting to one of them such an image as this:—suppose the case 
that so many of the great surrounding population as he could not, even 
in a judgment of charity, believe to be Chrfstians, that is, to be in a safe 
state for hereafter,—suppose the case to be that he knew so many were 
all doomed to sutler, by penal infliction, a death by torture, in the most 
protracted agony, with what feelings would he look on the populous 
city, the swarming country, or even a crowded, mixed congregation ? 
But what an infinitesimal trifle that would be in comparison with what 
he does believe in looking on these multitudes. How, then, can they 
bear the sight of the living world around them ? 

As to religious teachers ; if the tremendous doctrine be true, surely it 
ought to be almost continually proclaimed as with the blast of a trumpet, 
inculcated and reiterated, with ardent passion, in every possible form of 
terrible illustration ; no remission of the alarm to thoughtless spirits. 
What! believe them in such imconceivably dreadful peril, and not mul¬ 
tiply and aggravate the terrors to frighten them out of their stupor; 
deploring still, that all the horrifying representations in the power of 
thought and language to make, are immeasurably below the real urgency 
of the subject; and almost wishing that some appalling phenomenon of 
sight or sound might break in to make the impression that no words can 
make. If we saw a fellow-mortal stepping heedlessly or daringly on the 
utmost verge of some dreadful precipice or gulf, a humane spectator 
would raise and continue a shout, a scream, to prevent him. How then 
can it comport with the duty of preachers to satisfy themselves with 
brief, occasional references to this awful topic, when the most prolonged 
thundering alarm is but as the note of an infant, a bird, or an insect, in 
proportion to the horrible urgency of the case ? 

There has been, in some quarters, what appears to me a miserably 
fallacious way of talking, which affects to dissuade from dwelling on 
such terrifying representations. They have said. These terrors tend 
only to harden the mind ; approach the thoughtless beings rather, and 
almost exclusively, with the milder suasives, the gentle language of 
love. I cannot, of course, mean to say, that this also is not to be one of 
the expedients and of frequent application. But I do say, that to make 
this the main resource is not in consistency with the spirit of the bible, 
in which the larger proportion of what is said of sinners and addressed 
to them, is 'plainly in a tone of menace and alarm. Strange if it had 
been otherwise, when a righteous Governor was speaking to a depraved, 
rebellious race. Also it is matter of fact and experience, that it is very 
far oftener by impressions on fear that men are actually awakened to 
flee from the wrath to come. Let any one recall what he has known of 
such awakenings. Dr. Watts, all mild and amiable as he was, and de- 


270 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


lighted to dwell on the congenial topics, says deliberately, that of all the 
persons to whom his ministry had been efficacious, only one had received 
the first effectual impressions from the gentle and attractive aspects of 
religion; all the rest from the awful and alarming ones—the appeals to 
fear. And this is all but universally the manner of the divine process 
of conversion. 

A number (not large, but of great piety and intelligence) of ministers 
within my acquaintance, several now dead, have been disbelievers of the 
doctrine in question; at the same time not feeling themselves impera¬ 
tively called upon to make a public disavowal; content with employing 
in their ministrations strong general terms in denouncing the doom of 
impenitent sinners. For one thing, a consideration of the unreasonable 
imputations and unmeasured suspicions apt to be cast on any publicly 
declared partial defection from rigid orthodoxy, has made them think 
they should better consult their usefulness by not giving a prominence 
to this dissentient point; while yet they make no concealment of it in 
private communications, and in answer to serious inquiries. When, be¬ 
sides, they have considered how strangely defective and feeble is the effi¬ 
cacy, to alarm and deter careless, irreligious minds, of the terrible doc¬ 
trine itself notionally admitted by them, they have thought themselves 
the less required to propound one that so greatly qualifies the blackness 
of the prospect. They could not be unaware of the grievous truth of 
what is so strongly insisted on as an argument by the defenders of the 
tenet,—that thoughtless and wicked men would be sure to seize on the 
mitigated doctrine to encourage themselves in their impenitence. But 
this is only the same perverse and fatal use that they make of the doc¬ 
trine of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. If they will so abuse 
the truth we cannot help it.—But methinks even this fact tells against 
the doctrine in question. If the very nature of man, as created, every 
individual, by the sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder, that 
there is no possibility of conversion and salvation except in the instances 
where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming eflicacy, how 
can we conceive that the main proportion of the race thus morally impotent 
(that is, really and absolutely impotent) will be eternally punished for the 
inevitable result of this moral impotence ? But this I have said before. 

With all good wishes for the success of your studies and ministrations, 
I am, dear sir, yours truly, 

J. F. 


CCXXVII. TO THE REV. ROBERT AINSLIE. 

[On Socialist publications.] 

Stapleton, September 16, 1839 

Dear Sir,— I am truly obliged for the packet from you, forwarded to me 
by Mr. Wills; though I confess that no envelope, of paper or any other 



LETTERS. 


271 


substance, ever brought me anything so repulsively nauseous—a perfect 
moral assafcelida. 

As to the object for which it is sent to me f I did endeavor to make 
my answer unequivocal when you favored me with a short visit here. 
To answer a polite and estimable man, intent purely on a benevolent 
purpose, with the blunt, curt, impatient, “ No, I will not,”—“ say no 
more,” is very ungracious to the feeling of both parties. I had to 
plead off in such shifts of language as intended tliis meaning, without 
rudely saying it. 

A man necessarily best knows what his situation is, and what are his 
aptitudes and abilities (rather I should say, in this case, inabilities) for 
any given task. 

For one thing, as to/me. Your letter says “ a few days.” Now I 
have the mortification to confess to you, that to compose a short essay 
on the subject named would take me months, literally and certainly 
months, and not the lowest, or nearly the lowest, number in this plural 
term. With a mind of slower operation than any I ever knew that could 
operate at all, and with eyes that painfully recoil from much reading, 
and a memory that hardly retains anything that I do read, I should have 
(for the purpose of making a tract of say twenty pages) to go about 
reading, comparing, selecting, digesting, and trying to condense—with 
such an amount of still unsatisfactory labor as no one can imagine for 
me. There would be no idle pride or vanity of doing the thing well; 
but without such a hard and slow labor I should have no feeling that it 
was done well. And for the labor of composition I have, and I may 
say always have had, a very great repugnance—often an extreme and 
almost invincible repugnance : whether this be a fault, I know not; but 
it is an obstacle, and in part a disability. 

As another thing—for any small matter that I may think I can perform 
in the writing way, I am at present under a positive obligation, to which 
I am so ill responding that I am mortified and ashamed. 

It strikes me that it must be a great advantage for addressing the 
classes in question, on any of the proposed topics, that the writer should 
be one of those who have the op]3ortunity of a direct or very near ac¬ 
quaintance with the parties to be dealt with, in order to be aware of the 
])articular ways in which their minds are perverted, of their sort of no¬ 
tions, feelings and talk, the tempers they manifest, the modes of evasion, 
the signs they give of sincerity (in the coarse sense of the word) or 
of insincerity. The general argument may thus have many special adap¬ 
tations, according to characters and circumstances. It is obvious that 
this can be much better done by an observant person who is in the close 
neighborhood of the parties, so as to have something approaching to an 
immediate knowledge of their current sayings and doings—as Mr. Giles 

* Mr. Foster had been requested to write a tract on “ The Existence of 
God,” for the London City Mission. 


272 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


has been in the north, and as some of your intelligent friends probably 
are in London. 

The gross stupidity, together with the desperate, reckless impiety, 
manifested in some of the pieces they are circulating, seem to preclude 
all hope of doing them any good. The thing seems like a moral epi¬ 
demic, breathed from hell, destined to be permitted for a time to sweep a 
portion of the people to destruction, in defiance of all remedial interfer¬ 
ence. They are a doomed race, and their destiny will be accomplished. 
Still it is right that means should be tried, if it were merely that good 
men should evince their own fidelity to the good cause, fulfilling a duty 
which is such independently of any calculation of results. 

Unless I had been in a condition to render the small requested con¬ 
tribution of aid, it will seem a cheap and thankless kind of benevolence 
for me to say that I greatly applaud and admire the system of operations 
in which you are so meritoriously concerned. It is, however, a true 
though valueless tribute. I am, dear sir. 

Yours, very respectfully, 

J. Foster. 


CCXXVIII. TO J. COTTLE, ESQ. 

Stapleton, Tuesday, January, 1842. 

My dear Sir, —I am not pleased with myself for not having, long 
since, sent a line of grateful acknowledgment to you and Mrs. Hare, for 
one kind favor following another. I am afraid an extra lazy habit will 
have been superinduced by several weeks of lying nearly all the time 
in bed. If I had had any urgent business or vocation I should not have 
been allowed to delay till within a few days back the practice of rising 
soon after breakfast. In making any trial of myself, in any w'ay of exer¬ 
tion, I suppose the proof of my not having risen yet to the accustomed 
level would be a failure of strength. Otherwise I feel nearly what we 

denominate well .All about me have been most assiduously kind ; 

and a friend’s daughter, who has been with us all the while, and can 
read on interminably without physical injury or uneasiness (which my 
girls cannot), has read through I know not how many volumes to me. 

In returning toward the accustomed mode of life, the question will be 
how soon to leave the confinement to one warm room for the other parts 
of the house,—and the open air without the house. The winter is an 
untoward season for such experiment—the latter experiment. But while 
I am writing “ winter,” a warm splendid sunshine is falling over my 
table and room, giving a pleasing intimation of spring not very far olT. 

How many returning springs you and I have seen, how few more, at 
the very utmost, shall we stay to see ! There is a land where, in a 
much higher sense, “ everlasting spring abides, and never-withering 
flowers.” May almighty grace work and refine our souls to a fitness for 
that happy region of our Father and our Redeemer’s kingdom. 




LETTERS. 


273 


This time of confinement has been to me one of very serious exercise 
of mind. A deep sense of guilt has attended the review of life,—a life 
BO very, very imperfectly devoted to our great Master’s service. So 
much lukewarmness, so little zealous service, so muclTindolent "self-in¬ 
dulgence. I have profoundly felt how sad and hopeless a condition but 
for that blessed and all-sufficient resource, the atonement, accomplished 
by Him who offered himself without spot to God.—I cannot comprehend 
the fortitude with which, under a rejection of this our only hope, a con¬ 
scious sinner can dare to look forward to hereafter. I have been highly 
gratified to hear favorable accounts of your health, as being in some 
respects, especially your eyes, better than in past years. How little, at 
some seasons, did you anticipate staying so long in this world. Wise is 
the Sovereign appointment, for those who stay, and—for those who go. 

My thoughts are often pensively turning on the enumeration of those 
I may call my co-evals, and many of them of long acquaintance, who 
have been called away within a very few years. An old and much 
valued friend at Worcester, from whose funeral I returned little more 
than in time to attend that of our estimable Mr. Hare. Since then, your 
excellent sister,—Mr. Coles of Bourton, known and esteemed almost 
forty years,—Mr. Addington,—lately in Scotland, the worthy Mr. Dove, 
—and now, last of all, and so unexpectedly, Mr. Roberts. 


CCXXIX. TO THE REV. T. GRINFIELD, M.A. 

Stapleton, February 19, 1842. 

My dear Sir, —I have cause to be highly gratified by the friendly 
manoeuvre devised to put me in possession of the view of Snowdon. It is 
less faded than your description had led me to surmise. There appears 
to be no obliteration of even the finest lines, not even those slight ones, 
denominated interlines, traced between the stronger cuts of the graver. 
.... I add this print with great pleasure, both for its own and the 
friendly giver’s sake, to my accumulation of Woollett’s, numbering to 
about fifty, and including very nearly all his engravings. I need not say that 
this has been the consequence of mousing for them during a good many 
years,—watching and catching the occurrence of any of them, within 
my very narrow local sphere of such opportunities. The superlative 
excellence of WoolletCs workmanship seemed to warrant this sort of 
avarice. 

But for this, and the other large accumulations, how many times I 
have called myself a fool !—money expended, to an excess beyond all 
sober prudence in a person of my limited means—liability to damage, 

from careless handling, mildew, «fec., &c.I thank you for this 

well-engraved portrait of Wilson. I have not seen it before. I have a 
good portrait of Woollett, to place it beside. Never were two artists 

more fortunate in each other. 

VOL. II. 19 






274 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CCXXX. TO JOHN PURSER, ESQ. 

Stapleton, Feb. 22- 1842. 

.... When^t is considered that the object (in theory) of government 
is the prevention and castigation of iniquity, it is striking and melan¬ 
choly to see how much of that very iniquity may go into the manner of 
constituting and administering that same government. For example, the 
recent Dublin election. There cannot be one right-thinking, virtuous 
man in England whose blood has not almost boiled at the account of the 
complicated villainies of that business.But that we have a par¬ 

liament, for a very large part of it, got together very much by the same 
sort of means, one should be confident that so yile a job will be flung 
over. 

.... In my retired life here I see extremely few persons who are 
under the full excitement of the present great national interests, because 
I see very few persons of any sort ; but intelligence of the wide and 
deep agitation pours in through every channel ; would it might become 
such an earthquake as to overturn and prostrate the hateful domina¬ 
tion with wliich the nation is cursed. The aristocratic ascendency 
care nothing for the destitution and misery under which so vast a 
number of human beings are sinking to the dust, literally to the grave; 
their own selfish advantages held fast while they see the national resources 
fast draining away; and the last power of eftrontery asserting that 
their monopoly is not at all, or only in a trifling degree, the cause 
of that ruin of commerce which is depriving hundreds of thousands of 
the means of exercising their industry in order to live, and millions of 
the means of living otherwise than in the most abject penury. 

We are not now, like the ancient Jews, living under a dispensation 
of special Providence, manifested often in speedy vindictive visitation on 
oppressors of the poor; but one can hardly help thinking that some 
strong mark of the divine judgment will yet fall, in this life, on at least 
the chiefs in this iniquity. And in such an event, very slowly will com¬ 
passion be drawn toward any calamity that may be inflicted on them. 
“ They shall have judgment without mercy who have showed no mercy.” 
The case with them is, not only that they are rolling and rioting in 
wealth and luxury, while a vast multitude are sinking to the lowest depth 
of penury and misery, but that they obstinately and scornfully maintain, 
as a chief expedient for that wealth and luxury, the very thing which 
is a chief cause of that deep and wide, and still widening misery. Ire¬ 
land has heretofore been the first in our thoughts and references as 
a scene of popular wretchedness ; but now the most immediate and 
engrossing spectacle glares upon us in England. Yet I have not for¬ 
gotten M. De Beaumont’s description of Ireland, and estimate of its 
odious and incorrigible aristocracy. 

What a contrast to the moral aspect of Ireland, is its natural scenery, 
so abundant and various in all that is beautiful and grand. We have 




LETTERS. 


275 


been reading with great pleasure (as to this latter view of the country), 
the successive numbers of Mr. and Mrs. Hall’s traverse of your island ; 
a pleasure, suffering, as in all such cases, the drawback of considering 
the difference between reading and actually seeing. A few, very few 
of the remarkable places, indeed, I have the remembrance of having seen 
—as the Hill of Howth, the Dargle, the Glen of the Downs, the Devil’s 
Glen; and the general appearance of the Wicklow mountains. You 
may perhaps hardly recollect to have heard that once your excellent 
father, H. Strahan, and myself, made an excursion on foot to some of 
those romantic places, with an exertion of bodily strength how far beyond 
anything I could perform now. 

I hope you do not yet feel a very marked decline in this same “ natural 
force,” though the troop of stout fellows and line girls around you or 
belonging to you, may, if there were no other memento, remind you that 
the green age is far gone away. One can very seldom congratulate, 
without much deduction and reserve, the father of a numerous grown up 
and nearly grown up family. Yours appears to be the remarkable and 
felicitous case in which there needs no such reserve, and most cordially 
do 1 rejoice with you that it is so. 

For at least fifty years, I have never been confined to bed for a single 
day, till within the last two months, during the greater part of which I 
have been confined to a room, and for a considerable number of days, 
nearly to bed, by a cold and cough of a very severe and obstinate kind. 
I have now nearly regained my usual health, and am only waiting for a 
warm day to venture out of the house, just such a day as I have never 
forgotten, a first of January in Dublin, in I wonder what far off year of 
the time for ever gone, I walked on the quays in a warm delightful 
sunshine. 

I may guess that neither you nor Mrs. P. are much in the habit of 
“ taking walks,” for walking’s sake. If you ever do so, which of the 
two has the advantage in point of physical strength ? How much I 
should like to be the third in an amble by the grand canal—or on any 
other path or ground. 


CCXXXI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleton, May, 1842. 

.... Another house, which I have frequented many years, is finally 
closed against me. You have heard mention of Mr. W^e, near the 
Hotwells, Coleridge’s friend. I attended his funeral on Monday morn¬ 
ing. He had been as well as usual a fortnight before, but walked a 
great deal on one of the hottest days, sometimes with his hat off as he 
often did. The consequence was a severe illness, which the medical 
man (whom he would not for several days admit) pronounced from the 
time he saw him, fatal. For nearly a week I heard nothing of it. And 
when I went to see him, he was evidently near death, which took place 



276 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


two or three days after. He was in a state of stupor, and unable to 
speak. I thought he recognized me just for a moment; as indicated by 
a slight transient smile. I do not remember how or when I became 
acquainted with him, many years since. I had always found him 
extremely kind and hospitable. For years I had dined with him about 
once a month, usually in the company of Roberts, to whom he had been 
a faithful friend, and an attendant on his ministry. A few months before 
his death lie made me a present of a very splendid set of engravings 
which had cost him thirty pounds. Ilis age was eighty-one. He was 
not a literary nor properly speaking an intellectual man ; it havii.g been 
from mere generous good-will to a man floating loose on society, that he 
had, some forty years since, put his house and purse at the free service 
of Coleridge, and partly his associates. He was wholly a man of busi¬ 
ness all his life, till he retired about a dozen years since. He left con¬ 
siderable property, which goes chiefly to relations who cared but little 
about him. He did not make formally what we denominate a profession 
of religion, but there were favorable indications in the manner in which 
he expressed himself in his illness. I am not quite self-satisfied, for not 
having sometimes more expressly introduced religion in our conversa¬ 
tions. They turned most on that various knowledge of the world, which 
his long and diversified experience of it supplied. On his strict uniform 
integrity, I never heard a syllable of imputation or doubt. Reckoning 
up lately, I found him to be the eleventh individual of old acquaintance 
carried off within the last three years and a half, several of them beyond 
my own age, the others not many years short of it, so that there remain 

actually but three or four of you that are about my co-evals. 

Emphatically admonition upon admonition to prepare for the removal. . . . 


CCXXXII. TO THE REV. DR HARRIS. 

Stapleton, September 13, 1842. 

My dear Sir,— In apology for so long a delay in acknowledging your 
valuable and elegant present of “ The Great Commission,” I have to 
plead, partly as an effect of the intense heat, and partly as a consequence 
of a debilitating indisposition, a state of my eyes extremely inconvenient 
for reading and writing. Certainly I ought to have immediately informed 
you of the safe conveyance of the book, leaving it to a future time to take 
the liberty of making any slight observations, if there should occur to me 
any such as I could think at all worth your attention. But I indolently 
let myself be assured that you would not suspect any failure in the con¬ 
veyance. 

I only say what I have said to every one with whom I have spoken of 
tjie book, when I express my admiration of the eloquence, the compre¬ 
hension, the inexhaustible invention, the power of turning to account 
both invention and knowledge, and the energy and general precision of 
language. 




LETTERS. 


277 


If I might venture any hint on a lower key, it would perhaps be,—a 
tendency to diliuseness, or call it amplification, exuberance. The writer 
luxuriates in his opulence, sometimes diluting a little the effect which a 
little more brevity and compression might have sooner and more simply 
produced. Not that if I were asked to note any parts or passages 
better omitted, I should know where to point; it is all to the purpose ; 
only I may fancy that a somewhat less multifarious assemblage of ideas 
would converge more pointedly to that purpose. 

A reviewer, I remember, wished that the introductory section, the 
philosophical speculation, had been omitted. I should hardly say so ; it 
is very curious, and clearly stated and illustrated ; though not indispensa¬ 
bly neces.sary to the main object. Philosophy does go into a .startling 
theory of the far-spreading, complicated, interminable succession of effects, 
both in the physical and moral constitution of the world; making every¬ 
thing and all things perpetually operative, as both efibcts and causes, to 
the end of time, and immeasurably into space. Proximate dependences 
and sequences are obvious and important. And it may be assumed that 
effects of great moment may come somewhere hereafter, in the long con¬ 
catenation and wide ramification, proceeding as consequences from what 
may now^ appear trivial things. But no man wall 'practically believe the 
theory, in the unlimited terms of its exposition. No man will realize to 
himself or care to think, that the present state of his mind is the result 
of millions of agencies, brought dowm upon him in strict succession of 
cause and effect; or will hold himself under any responsibility for the 
future millions to follow and operate somewhere, some time, from every¬ 
thing he does and says. A curious paragraph is quoted from Babbage 
by Dr. Pye Smith. A captured negro is flung alive into the sea in the 
middle passage. From his last gurgle, proceeds an effect (an actual 
physical effect) which extends over the ocean, carrying to every solitary 
shore a disposition against the crime. A man destitute of science should 
speak with modesty; but I confess I have no power to believe that the 
disturbance of a square yard of water shall propagate a movement tha 
shall make its way, and in numberless directions, through all the turbu¬ 
lence and infinite confusion, and conflicts of the element all over its 
countless leagues.* But to the book. You will not wonder if a man 

* Of course, the truth involved in this particular illustration, and in the 
general law which it illustrates, is not supposed to be measurable or appre¬ 
ciable by the coarse instruments of human science. As a mathematical 
truth, however, it is demonstrable ; being based on one of the fundamental 
axioms of dynamics—that action and reaction are equal As a moral truth, 
the doctrine involved—the indestructibleness of moral influences—is, 
though on different grounds, equally undeniable. In an all-related and 
progressive system, no such influence or element having once found admis¬ 
sion, can, in every sense, cease to exist. The system can never again be, as it 
would have been if that element had never come into it. Each particular in¬ 
fluence blends with the ever-augmenting sum of influences, the whole of 
which is to be finally accounted for. Whether or not a man “ will hold 
himself under any responsibility for the future millions [of effects] to 


278 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


dried and chilled by seventy years, addicted through experience, if not 
somewhat given by temperament, to sombre meditations; compelled to 
look much on the dark side, presented, as it is, in immensely greater 
breadth, in history and the actual state o’f the world, than the bright one, 
should think he perceives a pervading tone of exaggeration. The author 
surveys the whole scene before him, under the gladsome light of an orient 
and a vernal sun. 

It has occurred to me to imagine a parallel representation carried on 
step by step with the Essayist, by such a man as I will describe. He 
shall be an earnest lover of truth, a decided believer in Christianity, a 
clear and impartial thinker (as far as impartiality is an attainable thing), 
and of ample information. He shall not be repelled into a temper of 
opposition by what he may deem excessive in the language and the ex¬ 
pectations of missionary advocates. “ Valeat quantum ,he will say,— 
not in the affectation of candor, but in simple justice. But he shall say, 
—“ Let us have the plain positive truth, the matter-of-fact reality, divest¬ 
ed of the fallacies of rhetoric, of all factitious excitements, and of 
everything which we must in conscientious judgment ascribe to en- 
tlmsiasm.” 

This man accompanies the eloquent and sanguine missionary advocate, 
in his wide geographical tour, to all the places where the missionary cause 
is in operation, and to those where there is the loudest call for its intro¬ 
duction, or the most favorable circumstances for its reception. And 
since that cause, in all its proclamations, claims the whole world as its 
rightful domain, for its activity and its calculation of ultimate effect, he 
is authorized to make his estimates a,nd proportions according to that 
great scale. 

He goes, shall we say, to the North American Indians, a race plainly 
doomed to become extinct, except some diminutive relic, as being irre- 

follow and to operate somewhere, some time, from everything he does or 
says,” will depend on his mental and moral constitution and habits. If I 
believe that the indestructibleness of moral influences is a doctrine of the 
word of God, I can hardly conceive of a more affecting joractfcaZ considera¬ 
tion than that all the effects which I voluntarily originate are, in a scripture 
sense, “ works,” some of which “go before” me into eternity to meet me 
on my arrival there ; and others of which will “ follow' after ” at an inde¬ 
finite interval, bringing with them all the fruits which, during that interval, 
they have contributed to produce. The attenuated feebleness and inappre¬ 
ciable subtlety of many of the influences in question, are admitted ; as well 
as the speed with which they pass beyond our powder of tracing them, the 
apparently inextricable manner in which they become complicated wuth 
other elements of a similar nature, and the fact that no man wull be held 
accountable for all the effects to the production of which his influence has 
tended. But these considerations do not affect the truth of the doctrine, 
nor should they abate its practical power. Their only proper effect seems 
to be that of making us feel more deeply the necessity of that final judgment 
in which the chemistry of the moral atmosphere shall be perfectly analysed, 
and of enlarging our views of that Omniscience which will then account 
for every particle of the whole, and apportion to every one who has 
breathed it his just award. J. H. 


LETTERS. 


279 


claimably wild, instinctively averse to any mode of life which would 
admit even a protracted aUention to Christian truth. And he will ask, 
what is the real proportionate amount of the Christian eflect produced, 
in present or past time, on this ill-fated, forlorn race ? And what are 
the circumstances, what is the value of the circumstances, affording a 
presumption of future success ? 

Next, he may as well go from the western coast, across the Pacific, to 
China, with its two or three hundred or more millions (Japan, with its 
30,000,000, he may not even touch). What is the effect here, taken in 
cool statistics, and what are the auspices ? How many times ten, out 
of these hundreds of millions, have received Christianity into their minds, 
plainly understanding it, and feeling its spiritual and moral power—after 
the long labors of a number of very able and indefatigable men ? And 
of what width, accurately measured, are those crevices and cracks which 
are deemed to promise a practicable breach in that mental wall around 
them, which has been proved of far more solid and enduring consistence 
than the massive and immense structure of stone which encircles their 
empire ? 

On his route to India our surveyor may take Tartary to the north, with 
its tribes and hordes of barbarians, and may cast a glance.over at the 
semi-paganism of a large portion of the nominally Greek church; or he 
may take a southward sweep by the Archipelago, Malacca, Siam, &c. ; 
and in his traverse through those realms of darkness, a faint glimmer 
on some spot or two, a little taper, as it were, will tell him all the 
difference between the present condition and the profoundest night. 

In the lower part of India, he toill find a tangible effect of long and 
multifarious missionary exertions. But after an expanded view over a 
hundred millions, it is with a depressed feeling that he wishes and tries to 
make out a list of one thousand genuine converts from paganism; including 
all the deceased. The greatest number of those who renounce idolitry 
pass into a sort of deism, little less hostile than paganism itself to Chris¬ 
tianity. He sees with pleasure an alterative process, gradually corroding the 
old system on the southern border, and a relaxing power of the superstition, 
to a certain extent, into tlie country; but is quite incredulous of any¬ 
thing like a general readiness and movement to break from it. It be¬ 
longs not to human nature to make other than a very slow and difficult 
escape from an inveterate, complex, comprehensive superstition, which 
pervades the whole economy of sentiment and life. 

Carrying forward with him the large portion of Mahomedanism in 
India, to be reckoned into the formally Mahomedan empire, our moral 
surveyor sees the prophet in such absolute and hitherto impregnable 
domination, that he asks, what miracle that is to be which is destined to 
break it up. 

The Jewish people he wull pass by, much in the same manner as 
an explorer of a continent would touch and leave the border of a tract 
of hopelessly sterile wilderness. And there is the vast interior of 
Africa ! 


280 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


In concluding this circuit round the globe, made in company with the 
missionary geographer, he will make account, willingly and gladly, of 
what has been done and is doing, and of all the real signs and omens of 
a brightening future. But he will still insist, “ Let us, for the present 
at least, keep faithfully to proportion and reality.” And then, to how 
many splendid and almost tumultuary celebrations may there be in a 
low, and, as it were, distant sound, an echo that mutters “ the day of small 
things.” And as to the wide-spread agitation, mobility, and upheaving 
restlessness which is disturbing the old order of things, and is represent¬ 
ed as having an almost directly religious tendency, as if all nations were 
simultaneously awakening from their long and deep stupor, and passion¬ 
ately crying out for a true religion, he cannot help thinking there is an 
excessive indulgence of excited imagination. How many voices, of in¬ 
telligent meaning, in this cry ? how many from China and the contiguous 
regions ? how many from Northern Asia and India ? how many from 
Persia, from Interior Africa, from the whole Moslem world ;—from the 
papal dominions in Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Central and 
South America ? 

He may be old enough to have lived through the whole course of the 
most prodigious and overturning commotion, that, for many ages, has 
sliaken and coimilsed the world; and he deplores to see how small in 
proportion the result, as to any unequivocal aid or impulsion to the cause 
of Christianity. 

Why do I say, and so prolixly, all this ? Certainly not from a perverse 
disposition to depreciate what is real and true, in fact or in prospect; but 
to intimate that there may be a very material difference between the 
amount of what is strictly real and true, and the magnified and ambitious 
conception that would be formed from an elated eloquence ; and to sug¬ 
gest, that it may be useful sometimes to recover from that fascination to 
a calm and exact estimate. 

.... I must ask indulgence to my writing in an unconnected and 
fragmentary way ; for it is going much aside from any line of connection 
if I notice here, that part of your doctrine which inculcates, for the 
support of the missionary system, such a restrictive economy of general 
expenditure, as would exclude everything that could be adjudged a super¬ 
fluity. Now is it not obvious, that in the present, or anything like the 
present, constitution of society, a practical conformity to this rule would 
have a calamitous consequence ? 

I have sometimes imagined a zealous advocate of missions, enforcing 
on a large assembly this law in application to particulars; taking the 
licence of specifying them by name in order to make the application 
express and pointed. He shall, for instance, denounce all decorative 
furniture; condemn all unnecessary diversity of dresses ; and any quality 
of the necessary ones beyond plainness and cheapness— silks, probably, 
to be renounced, all of elaborate and ornamental texture certainly; con¬ 
demn Ihe wares of the silversmith, and even the watchmaker, observing 


LETTERS. 


281 


that a pinchbeck watch-case will do just as well as a silver one—gold not 
even to be tliought of;—put a very close restriction, amounting to a pro¬ 
hibition, except in very special cases, of carriages ;—prohibit supernume¬ 
rary books, engravings, &c., &.C., &:.c. 

Well, the next day he calls for a subscription, on, say, the linen- 
draper, mercer, hatter, or tailor (and, observe, these classes contribute 
more in proportion to beneficent purposes than richer men). What will 
the mercer, draper, cabinet-maker, &.C., say to him ? “ Sir, you must 

not come to me ; for, if your injunctions were to take full effect, my bu¬ 
siness, the support of my family, and from which I have afforded some¬ 
thing to your cause, would be broken up.” If in London, let him take 
his answer from a Spitalfields manufacturer. As to the coach-builder, 
he may dismiss immediately nine or ten of his hands to seek employment 
and bread in some other business equally cut down. It is plain that so¬ 
ciety must fall in pieces, unless maintained by a miracle. 

If it should occur to any one to allege that the fitting out of missionary 
enterprises, on a great scale, would itself bring into action a considerable 
portion of employment and trade, we have only to ask, whence are the 
tradesmen and workmen to be paid^ but from the missionary funds—and 
those funds, whence to be supplied ? The expenditure is mainly absorbed 
by a far-off field, whence no return is to be expected, except in the dis¬ 
tant contingency of a prosperous commerce with the remote regions being 
created through the civilizing effect of the missionary establishments. 

I3y such an omnivorous requisition of the missionary cause, the middle 
and lower classes of the religious public would be reduced very much 
below a mere inability to contribute ; it would be, as to a great number, 
an inability to live* Allow me a few sentences on that which forms the 


* If I had replied to these remarks in a spirit of respectful and amicable 
controversy—a kind of reply, however, which, as will be seen at the close 
of the letter, Mr. Foster deprecated—I might, perhaps, have said something 
to the following effect:—Your train of remark on Christian expenditure, 
considering “ the present constitution of society,” contains very much of 
aflecting truth. Nor am 1 aware that in anything I have said or written 
on the subject, I have even given utterance to sentiments avowedly, or even 
by fair implication, at variance with it. My chief design has been to show, 
not that the sumptuary liabits of Christians are wrong, allov/ing the present 
constitution of society to he right, but that this constitution itself is mate¬ 
rially at issue with the Word of God ; and, consequently, that the Christian 
has to choose between inflaming the evil, by his conformity to the particu¬ 
lar usages of society in question, and the opposite course of correcting 
them by making some approximation to the scriptural requirements of self- 
denial. 

You say, that the trade classes “ contribute more in proportion to benefi¬ 
cent purposes than richer men.” They do so, and the important fact 
involves, as it appears to me, the condemnation of that state of things 
which you view with so lenient an eye. For, in the first place, if the fact 
implies anything, it implies that as the tradesman becomes rich, he will 
contribute less proportionately to benevolent objects than he did before ; 
a result which I do not see that, in your principles, you could condemn. 
For, secondly, if vou went to him to remonstrate on the obvious inconsistency 


282 


LIFE OF JOFlx\ EO.SrER. 


essence and prominence of your theory—the asserted obligation of all 
Christians to send forth, to throw out, if I may so express it, the whole 
soul, with all its faculties, passions, affections, to go into an extraneous 
and foreign interest and agency ; passing forward, onward, in unremitting 
impulse and expansion, to indefinite remoteness. This was the spirit 

of his I'berality diminishing in proportion to the increase of his wealth, he 
might justly reply, “ Sir, you must not come to me; for if your remon¬ 
strance were to take full effect in the reduction of my expenses, my trades¬ 
men would have less to give. I may be told, indeed, that I shall be held 
responsible by the Supreme for not enlarging my charities in proportion to 
the increase of my means; that I am robbing myself of much true and 
refining enjoyment in not being iny own almoner; and that I cannot be 
surprised if my tradesmen imitate my example, and spend their gains ex¬ 
clusively on themselves, with the excuse that the class below them will 
have so much the more to give ; and if that lower class again should adopt 
the same course—pleading that which is right for me cannot be wrong for 
them. In a word, acting on your principle, I have less than ever to con¬ 
tribute to the great objects which you advocate; and I rather expected that 
you would remonstrate with me for not having spent the whole.” Now I 
do not see what you could say consistently in reply. For if you tell me 
that your remarks only go the length of implying that all the decorations 
and superfluities of the rich must not be given up, or the tradesman will 
have nothing to impart to charitable objects, I might rejoin, that I only 
imply that, unless some limit be assigned to these superfluities, the rich 
will have nothing to impart, and will be doing all that example can do to 
lead the classes below them to be as self-indulging and all-absorbing as 
themselves. While you, therefore, are saying to me, in effect, “ Take 
care, or the tradesman will not have the means of giving;” I am only say¬ 
ing to you, in effect, “ Take care, or, with the increase of his gains, there 
will be such an increase of his personal expenditure as to reduce the pro¬ 
portional amount of his liberality; while the rich will consider themselves 
exempt from consecrating more than the minimum of their property to 
God.” 

Now, dear Sir, for which of the two cautions is there the greater neces¬ 
sity ^ Is the danger on the side of too great self-denial, or too little ? For 
about six thousand years it has been, you will admit, rather on the side of 
the too little. And, judging from present indications, the danger of its 
becoming too great is at least six thousand years in the future. Indeed, 
the sumptuary habits in question—the only ones which I have ever decried 
—are admitted on all hands to be on the increase. It is not an evil that 
cures itself by excess. Its “ appetite grows by that it feeds on.” Every 
new prospect of getting wealth, gives the demon power to take more entire 
])OS3ession of the soul. Hence the railroad mania, by which many of the 
religious have been “ possessed,” as well as those who make little or no 
pretensions to religion. 

Nor does the evil resulting from these habits limit its effects to the re¬ 
duction of the Christian treasury. If the newspaper and periodical press 
is to be relied on, the name of the evil is “ Legion,” and its effects every¬ 
where, “ grinding the face of the poor,” giving to them the lowest wages 
possible, exacting from their bones and sinews as much labor as can be 
got, without quite breaking up the human machine at once; allowing to 
one or two millions of “ white slaves” no leisure, and grudging them their 
little rest, and necessitating a state of brutalizing “ Popular Ignorance,” a 
description of which you have burnt into the minds of your readers. Those 
evils are only some of the natural progeny of that ever-exacting principle 
of selfishness, which robs the altar of God for its own table, crying, “ Give! 
give !” and is never satisfied. J. H. 


LETTERS. 


283 


indispensable to an apostle, and not a little of it is to an effective mis¬ 
sionary. But I own my inability to conceive the general realization of 
such an order of sentiment in the minds of religious men as possible, 
without a recasting of humanity and society into a most unnatural and 
factitious shape, or even as compatible with a due and faithful attention 
to what is to men, as individuals, the one greatest interest. The chief 
concern of each one is his own final happiness. Indeed what is the 
object of the missionary cause itsdf but just this—to bring men as indi¬ 
viduals to become earnestly intent cn their own salvation? It is to fix 
each of them there, as the primary object, and not instantly to start them 
off as so many missionaries to others, as if the good obtained were to be 
realized rather in the transmission than in the possession. The concern 
for the welfare of others is to come as a secondary eflect of the convert¬ 
ing grace. 

And looking at the condition of the generality of good men among our¬ 
selves, I can conceive an order of feeling and reflection in many of them 
nearly such as I may suppose one of them to express—“ I wish well to the 
missionary cause, and have contributed something in aid, from my limited 
moans, drawn upon as they are in so many different ways. But before 
I (uin send out my whole soul in a passionate concern for the remote 
tribes of the earth, to glow with ardor unabating on the other side of the 
globe, I must have a less onerous pressure at home, in the concerns of— 
that soul itself. There is the endless conflict with its corrupt nature, to 
be maintained often with indignant and melancholy emotions. There 
are the pains and apprehensions of conscious guilt; the temptations and 
the besetting sin ; the defectiveness of my faith, and the difficulty of main¬ 
taining a devotional spirit. There is, in short, the discipline for “ work¬ 
ing out my own salvation with fear and trembling.” And to give em¬ 
phasis to .all this, there is the near aspect of Death confronting me. 
Under the weight of this self-centering interest, real, immediate, and 
urgent, I confess I am tempted to say, What are to me, in comparison, 
Ai'ricans, Hindoos, Chinese, Mahornedans; they are in the hands of God 
all-powerful and beneficent; and are they to be so far transferred to me 
that I am to talvC it on my conscience, that he is, at this very time, hold¬ 
ing me responsible for his own final award to any of them ? 

It may well be believed that something like this is tlie case with many 
thoughtful men ; and most the case with the most thoughtful, most reflec¬ 
tive._The man may have to add (in very many cases there is certainlij 

this addition), the cares, the often painfully absorbing cares of a family; 
and the laborious, anxious occupation, and frequent vexations and hazards 
of a secular business, which compulsorily demands the far greater part 
of the man’s time and thought; especially and eminently so in the present 
state of the world and of this country. 

I put the case rather strongly, but honestly; and I really do not see ho'^: 
that effusion of the whole soul, in a passion for operating on the pagan 
world, can be compatible with the actual condition, and the most immediate 


284 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


and imperative duties and necessities, of the far greater number, indeed, 
of the main body of religious persons. I e\en fear that a certain portion 
(I should be sorry to know how much) of the lively excitement recently 
and..at present in action, may be at the cost of some diversion from a de¬ 
liberate, constant attention to those most immediate and grave interests; 
and it is easy to apprehend how the effect of the dazzle of such a large 
and ambitious object, presenting itself in the character of a zealous 
Christianity, may for a while put out of sight the serious business which 
requires to be transacted within; and preclude or suspend the sense of 
its necessity. 

When the demand made on a good man by so many cares of his own, 
allows him to look abroad, the thing that first and immediately meets his 
sight is the nearly pagan condition of a multitude of human creatures 
close around him ; and the most wretched state of education. Will it 
not be, and should it not be, some time before he can quite freely send 
off' his thoughts to regions at the distance of a thousand leagues; for 
which flight the missionary orator is earnest to give them wings ? 

.... I do not forget that home-operations, in promotion of education 
and religion, have been greatly augmented during the period in which 
the missionary spirit has come into such extensive activity. And it may 
be assumed to have been, for the greater part, the same principle that 
has been at work in the near and the far-off departments. In the latter, 
however, there has been much more of a factitious interest, from the 
effect on imagination of what is novel, foreign, strange, picturesque, and 
adventurous ; from the sympathetic ignition of large assemblies ; some¬ 
times from ostentatious rivalry. It is like the descent from high poetry 
to very humble prose, to come back from many-colored tribes, from per¬ 
fumed groves, from grand remains of fallen empires, from islands repre¬ 
senting Paradise, and even from the grotesque enormities of idolatry,— 
to look on the state of your own parish. I am, however, unwilling to 
believe there are many instances like the one I may mention. A few 
days since I was in the company of a very respectable dissenting minis¬ 
ter, an old acquaintance, stationed till lately in a rather prosperous rural 
village. He said the missionary cause is in great favor with the con¬ 
gregation, drawing from them and the vicinity about sixty pounds a-year; 
but that there is hardly anything worth the name of a school in the 
place, except the little that can be done on a Sunday to be forgotten in 
the week. Again and again, he had made strong representations to 
them on the subject, but in vain: and consequently the children have 
been growing up in gross and vulgar ignorance. There is more eclat in 
contributing to promote education in the West or the East Indies, than 
among the rustics in the vicinity.*—There is one other topic on which 

* Here are three objects specified as being, not only distinct from the 
missionary enterprise, but even endangered by it. The first is “ the self¬ 
centering interest ” of a man’s own salvation. As far as I remember, I have 
uniformly represented all relative benevolence as having its only scriptural 


LETTERS. 


285 


I should be tempted into an emphatic language, if I had not a difficulty 
to express exactly, discreetly, perhaps intelligibly, what I wish to con¬ 
vey. I allude to the light in which the Ahnighty is presented in much 

foundation laid in peisonal piety ; and have repeatedly cautioned the r<^ider 
against the danger of regarding the former as a substitute for the latter. 
But is there no danger on the other side } Do not Mr. Fostei’’s remarks 
appear to imply that the relative and other personal claims of piety are 
antagonistic ; that the one class is defrauded of just so much as is given to 
the other ? Whereas the love of God and of our fellow-man are both 
based ultimately on the same principle. A practical regard for the well¬ 
being of man is made, in Scripture, not only a si^n of piety, but is one of 
the appointed means for increasing it. So that while it is quite true that 
“ the most thoughtful ” will take the most comprehensive views of the 
claims of their own salvation, it is true also, that if tlieir thoughtfulness 
he Scriptural, they will take the most enlarged views of the claims of their 
fellow-men. They will not look for the most eminent piety in men who 
have thought themselves into a cavern or a cell, but among those whose 
piety is alike devotional and active, ))ersonal and relative. This is only 
in harnmny with that general principle of the Divine government, that 
“ he who watereth others shall himself also be watered.” 

Another of the supposed claimants is, “ the painfully absorbing cares of 
a family and this especially owing to “ the present state of the world 
and of this country.” 1 doubt not that many a good man sighs to do more 
than he is doing for the diffusion of the gospel, but is incapacitated by his 
social condition as much as if he were a fettered captive. The bare state¬ 
ment of this fact, however, settles nothing. It names only the proximate 
cause of his incapacity. All the preceding causes are left in darkness. 
His best friends may have doubted his wisdom, apart from all religious 
considerations, in entailing on himself the cares in question. Or, if it be 
said that the causes are of a general nature, and arise from “ the state of 
this country,” this, it seems to me, only brings us back to the subject of 
the preceding note. For what is there so disabling for beneficence in the 
character of the times, if it be not the perpetual conflict which it has come 
to be the custom to maintain between income and expenditure.^ To aug¬ 
ment the income there must be untiring vigilance, hazardous speculations, 
and competition in all its forms. And as such conduct in one party na¬ 
turally tends to create similar habits in another, the painfully absorbing 
cares which at first served to increase profits, become indispensable at 
length in order barely to retain them, or even to stave off’ absolute ruin. 
That the evil is difficult of cure, I admit; every chronic disease of society 
is so. I speak only of its nature and origin; and may respectfully remind 
the Christian that if the evil be of the kind described, the remedy is (it 
may be indeed only to a very limited extent) in his own hands, and that 
he is held responsible for employing it. 

I will briefly advert to the third object noticed by Mr. Foster, the nearly 
pagan condition of “ multitudes close around us.” The order which our 
beneficence should observe in arranging its objects, is, I think, prescribed 
in a general manner, in the word of God. Nor can that order—proceeding 
from ourselves outwards—be violated with impunity. Not only would it 
be an inversion of nature to begin with “ the ends of the earth ;” a wise 
man would begin with “ those of his own flesh,” if only for the sake of 
creating the means for more effectually benefiting ultimately those distant 
regions. But, then, the prescribed order of our procedure leaves another 
question still open ;—how much of our attention is due to a near object 
before we extend our regards to one remoter ? In other words, the doc¬ 
trine of order introduces the doctrine oi proportion. For it is as clear 
that remote objects have a claim on our regard as soon as a certain proper 


286 


LIFE OF JOPIN FOSTER. 


of what is spoken and written in the missionary service. I confess I 
have been confounded at what I have heard or read. For it seems to me 
to represent the Maker and Sovereign of the world as acting on a plan 
of exceedingly limited interference in the moral condition and destiny of 
the human race,—almost as acting in a subordinate or secondary capacity 
to the human instruments he employs, or unsuccessfully calls upon to be 
employed. 

The idea forcibly suggested is, that, calmly keeping his power in abey¬ 
ance, he devolves on a certain portion of men a real practical responsi¬ 
bility for the salvation or perdition of undefined multitudes of their race; 
making his own will on that awful alternative, conditional on the choice, 
and conduct of these responsible persons. Certain things conferred on 
the fallen race would be an infinite blessing; they may be conferred, for 
He is willing; but whether they shall be conferred, depends on another 
will—the will of that same section of the race to do their duty to the 
rest. As if he should be supposed to say, “ If you will zealously labor 
for their salvation, I will save them, otherwise not. They may be saved 
if you choose ; it is more your concern than mine.” A tribe or nation 
of eastern pagans has perished, through successive generations; there 
has been in the church in this western world a moral power, and there¬ 
fore duty, to secure, in some important measure, the contrary event; the 
decision was placed in the hands of the depositaries of that power ; but 
they were destitute of Christian philanthropy, and they decided fatally 
for the poor pagans whose destiny was depending on them. Thus the 
final state of a portion, perhaps a large portion, of the human race, has 

tion of labor has been bestowed on the nearer, as it is that such labor was 
not due to them earlier. Now if m timing and in apportioning the regard 
given respectively to home and to foreign claims, some slight errors of 
apparent partiality are chargeable on Christian activity, it can hardly be a 
subject for wonder. If such errors can be pointed out indeed, and if they 
are not then corrected, the parties concerned will lay themselves open to 
rebuke. But let it be remembered that when the missionary enterprise 
began, the churches were doing comparatively nothing for either class of 
objects. It was a great thing to awake them. It can scarcely be a matter 
of just complaint that they did not awake to perfect wisdom at once. 
Churches and societies, like individuals, can acquire this qualification only 
by experience. Besides, it will be admitted that, speaking generally, the 
men who have done the most for foreign objects, have been among the 
most attentive to the claims of home. And, as it has been already re¬ 
marked, that the personal and the relative claims of piety are not antago¬ 
nistic, the same may be affirmed of missionary and of home claims. The 
diffusion of the gospel is not only a sign of the piety of a chuich, by re¬ 
action it becomes the means of increasing that piety. 

Mr. fester’s anecdote illustrates a fact of occasional occurrence. A 
similar instance has lately come under my own observation. But as a set 
off, instances might be named in which the salary of the minister had been 
increased, and the education of the young had received an impulse, in 
consequence of the new life infused by the cause of Christian missions. 
I will only add, that Mr Foster’s own inimitable missionary sermon will 
be found to contain sentiments admirably corrective of those now remarked 
on in his letter. J. H. 


LETTERS. 


2R7 


been, immediately, less at the disposal of the sovereign Maker, than of a 
certain order of human beings, who might have eiibeted their salvation 
if they would. Multitudes of pagans are perishing at this hour, actually 
because Christians in England are parsimonious of their exertions and 
their money. The sovereign Being is looking on, and leaving their fu¬ 
ture state dependent on this penurious and precarious resource. In one 
of the speeches not long since delivered in Bristol, the speaker supposed 
himself to be addressing some one (any one) individual; and said;— 
“ By refusing at this time the contribution which you can afford, you 
may be consigning one soul, that otherwise miglit be saved, to endless 
perdition.” A not unusual figure has been that of a miserable crowd 
approaching the verge of a dreadful gulf. And the exclamation is, Oh, 
will you not eagerly and instantly hasten to throw yourselves between ? 
What mortal cruelty to linger ! The catastrophe is infallible if you do 
not rush to the rescue ; for higher power declines to interpose. Lords 
of their destiny! look at the dread alternative you are deciding. At 
hearing such things who can keep out, or force out, of his mind the idea 
of a Deity resembling the god.s of Epicurus ? 

Sometimes indeed, instead of what looks so like an attribution of in¬ 
difference, a more gracious and sympathetic character is ascribed to the 
supreme power. He is earnestly intent on human salvation. “ The 
heart of God ” is deeply moved, he longs, he yearns for, he almost pas¬ 
sionately desires, the conversion of heathens, of all mankind ; he is, as 
it were, impatient to see his servants in zealous action; he pleads to 
them every motive that ought to arouse and actuate them; he reproaches 
their indolence; sets before them the mighty things which cannot be 
done till they shall go vigorously into the work; his operation being sub¬ 
jected to unwilling delay in waiting for theirs. And this is the almighty 
Being whose single volition could transform the whole race in a 
moment! 

Now, my dear Sir, whatever be the right way of setting forth the 
subject, I do think that which I have attempted to describe borders very 
nearly (doubtless unconsciously and unthinkingly) on impiety. I need 
not be reminded that in the Scriptures there are many expressions, used 
in condescending accommodation, which might be cited as analogous to 
the strain of language against which I am protesting. Let those strongly 
figurative expressions stand out as illustrative of that condescension, 
manifesting itself in such forms as men might not have presumed to 
utter. Let them be cited as what God has condescended to say. But 
to construct of similar figures our current language, which ought to be 
that of plain truth and fact, will be to establish a fallacious order of 
ideas, to which literal truth will come to be the exception. 

.... A glance back at what I have thus been writing makes me 
fear, that you will set me down as one of the coldest friends, to say the 
least, of the missionary cause. Not so. I am gratified in viewing the 
wide and widening extent of its operations—the comprehensive state- 


288 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


merit of which forms a liighly valuable section of your work ; and must 
have surprised many of its readers. And in every well-judged attempt 
I feel the complacency of a confidence ihai some good will be done. It 
should need no sentiment even of piety to admire the sell-devotement of 
so many Christian adventurers and laborers: it might seem to have a 
commanding appeal to that warm dilating sympathy which all the world 
gives to the heroic characler when displayed, as you observe, with an¬ 
imadversion that cannot be too pointed, in any department of enterprise 
but the cause of Christ. But unfortunately for me, from a temperament 
somewhat sanguine and ardent in youth, I am dried and cooled down to 
that of old a^e. The course of the world’s events since that “ season 
of prime,” has been a grievous disappointment. No one who is not to¬ 
ward twice your age can have any adequate conception of the commo¬ 
tion there was in susceptible and inflammable spirits. The proclamation 
went forth, “ Overturn, overturn, overturn,” and there seemed to be a 
responsive earthquake in the nations. The vain, short-sighted seers of 
us had all our enthusiasm ready to receive the magnificent changes ;— 
the downfall of all old and corrupt institutions, the explosion of preju¬ 
dices ; the demolition of the strongholds of ignorance, superstition, and 
spiritual with all other despotism; man on the point of being set free for 
a noble career of knowledge, liberty, philanthropy, virtue—and all that, 
and all that. A most shallow judgment; a pitiable ignorance of the 
nature of man was betrayed in these elated presumptions. But they so 
possessed themselves of the mind as to prepare it to feel a bitterness of 
disappointment as time went on, through so many lustrums, and accom¬ 
plished so niggardly a portion of all the dream. 

And now, at the end of half a century, how much has been eflfected 
in the moral and religious state of the human race, comprehensively 
considered ? To what amount are they wiser, better, and happier ? 
True, in certain particulars, and estimated according to a limited scale, 
it may be said and admitted that much has been done; and we are very 
apt to fix on some favored section in the general view, and falsify its 
magnitude. But if our account be formed on a scale commensurate 
with the whole field of the active world, there would seem to be a 
mournful disproportion between the collective result, and the prodigious 
amount of things bearing with combined, mingled, and what should have 
been, alterative agency, on the fiuman condition—the agitations, colli¬ 
sions, changes; the schemes, toils, sufferings; the expenditures of 
thought, speech, property, health, and life. There is, at least, so obstinate 
an appearance of disproportion that, after being looked upon through a 
long course of years, it denies me the ability to yield a full sympathy to 
your all-engrossing urgency of incitement, and enthusiasm of confi¬ 
dence. I cannot help hearing a voice (may it be that of a false prophet) 
which says, you reckon too fast, in your calculation of the effects to be 
accomplished by the actors and means already in the employment, or 
immediately at the disposal, of the missionary service. And as to that 


LE'ITERS. 


289 


million-handed energy, whicli you so eloquently summon forth, as by 
sound of trumpet, in the form of what might be called a general risino- 
of the Christian community, to devote their whole faculties and means, 
I must needs think, that religion, real religion, exists under too many 
causes of repression, far too many inevitable complications with self- 
concerns, domestic concerns, worldly concerns, party concerns, to allow 
the possibility of such a demonstration besides that, as I have noted 
before, one principle insisted on as indispensable to it, would, if attempted 
to be carried out to the extent apparently demanded, ruinously derange 
the frame and consistence in wdiich society has always existed; that ?s, 
wants to be supplied, by means of the multiplicity and diversification 
of other wants, many of them artificial. 

I hope, indeed may assume, that you arc of a cheerful temperament; 
but are you not sometimes invaded by the darkest visions and reflections 
while casting your view over the scene of human existence, from the 
beginning to this hour ? To me it appears a most mysteriously aw^ful 
economy, overspread by a lurid and dreadful shade. I pray for the piety 
to maintain an humble submission of thought and feeling to the wise and 
righteous Disposer of all existence. But to see a nature created in 
purity, qualified for perfect and endless felicity, but ruined at the very 
origin, by a disaster devolving fatally on all the race—to see it in an 
early age of the world estranged from truth, from the love and fear of 
its Creator, from that, therefore, without which existence is a thing to 
be deplored—abandoned to all evil, till swept away by a deluge—the 
renovated race revolving into idolatry and iniquity, and spreading down¬ 
ward through ages in darkness, wuckedness and misery—no Divine dis¬ 
pensation to enlighten and reclaim it, except for one small section, and 
that section itself a no less flagrant proof of the desperate corruption 
of the nature;—the ultimate, grand remedial visitation, Christianity, 
laboring in a difficult progress and very limited extension, and soon per¬ 
verted from its purpose into darkness and superstition, for a period of a 
thousand years—at the present hour known and even nominally acknow¬ 
ledged by very greatly the minority of the race, the mighty mass re¬ 
maining prostrate under the infernal dominion of which countless 
generations of their ancestors have been the slaves and victims—a de¬ 
plorable majority of the people in the Christian nations strangers to the 
vital power of Christianity, and a large proportion directly hostile to it; 
and even the institutions pretended to be for its support and promotion, 
being baneful to its virtue—its progress in the work of conversion, in 
even the most favored part of the world, distanced by the progressive in¬ 
crease of the population, so that, even there (but to a fearful extent if we 
take the world at large) the disproportion of the faithful to the irreli¬ 
gious is continually increasing—the sum of all these melancholy facts 
being, that thousands of millions have passed, and thousands every day 
are passing, out of the world, in no state of fitness for a pure and happy 

VOL. II. 20 



290 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


state elsewhere. Oh, it is a most confounding and appalling con¬ 
templation ! 

And it would be a transcendently direful one, if I believed the doctrine 
of the eternity of future misery. It amazes me to imagine how thought¬ 
ful and benevolent men, believing that doctrine, can endure the sight of 
the present world and the history of the past. To behold successive, 
innumerable crowds carried on in the mighty impulse of a depraved na¬ 
ture, which they are impotent to reverse, and to which it is not the will 
of God in his sovereignty to apply the only adequate power, the with¬ 
holding of which consigns them inevitably to their doom—to see them 
passing throught a short term of mortal existence (absurdly sometimes 
denominated a probation^) under all the world’s pernicious influences, 

Mr. Foster has here advanced within the awful shadow of a subject 
which seems partially to have obscured his perception of the ultimate 
ground of moral responsibility. There is reason to believe that the divine 
standard of man’s accountability is a scale of all but unlimited graduation. 
While, therefore, it would be absurd to suppose that “ the men of Sodom 
and Gomorrah” will be judged by the same scale as the men of “ Caper¬ 
naum,” would it not be almost as absurd to infer that, on that account, they 
will be judged by no scale whatever ? “ They who have sinned without 

(a written) law, shall be judged without law.” Destitute of a written law, 
they are still within the jurisdiction of natural law. Of this class let the 
most uncivilized tribe be selected; still its members will be found to be 
held answerable to, and by, each other. Of this tribe let the last wander¬ 
ing survivor be taken; and it will be found that he is still, in many res¬ 
pects, “ a law unto himself” The elements of responsibility are within 
him. His moral constitution, not his external advantages, renders him 
amenable to law. He is a man, and therefore he will be judged. He is a 
man whose moral nature has been exposed to the most debasing and de¬ 
praving influences, and therefore he will be judged accordingly. 

It may not be irrelevant to add, first, that as, among such portions of the 
human race, the period of intellectual infancy lasts much longer than it 
does among more cultivated classes, there is high probability for conclud¬ 
ing that the state of accountability is not reached till a comparatively ad¬ 
vanced period of youth. Secondly, it may be woi’th consideration whether, 
while we shall be reckoned with as to how much we have advanced in 
holiness considering our advantages, there may not be many who will be 
reckoned with as to how little they have retrograded in evil considering their 
disadvantages. I would not for a moment be supposed to contravene the 
everlasting principle, that “ without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” 
But, believing that there is a class of cases in Which a struggle is main¬ 
tained against moral determination, which, though unsuccessful in the best 
sense, involves a greater amount of resistance to evil than is made by some 
who yet advance in excellence, it is to be supposed that such resistance 
will be taken into the account, however unavailing it may be in the highest 
respect. And, thirdly, is not the doctrine of future punishment rendered 
gratuitously startling, when viewed in relation to the classes described by 
Mr. Foster, by the too positive, equalizing, and objective views generally 
entertained respecting the place of punishment. In opposition to scrip¬ 
ture, the too general impression is, that there will be the same punishment 
for all the lost. And this, indeed, would follow necessarily, if, as it is too 
commonly supposed, the punishment depends almost entirely on the place, 
and if there is one place for all. But this would be to confound all grada¬ 
tions of evil character ; and so far to make a mockery of that future judg- 



LETTEHS. 


291 


with the addition of the malign and deadly one of the great tempter and 
destroyer, to confirm and augment the inherent depravity, on their speedy 
passage to everlasting woe,—T repeat, I am, without pretending to any 
extraordinary depth of feeling, amazed to conceive what they contrive to 
do with their sensibility, and in what manner they maintain a firm as¬ 
surance of the Divine goodness and justice. Yet I see numbers of these 
good men preserving, apparently without great effort, a tone of equani¬ 
mity, sometimes excited to hilarity, while everywhere closely surrounded 
by creatures whom, as not being the subjects of divine grace, they deli¬ 
berately regard as the destined victims of eternal fire; and must regard 
as if created on purpose, that by passing a few fleeting sinful moments 
here, they might be prepared for it. 

I meet with a few intelligent and pious men who join in the disbelief; 
and suspect, that unavowedly, many others are repelled into strong doubt, 
at the least, by the infinite horror of the tenet. 

Here again I am reminded how the missionary advocates make of all 
this just a charge against the church—the religious section, as having 
been in effect owing to them; as if they had a certain power and respon¬ 
sibility, and had it now, to reverse substantially this awful destiny. But 
the supreme Sovereign’s scheme and economy for the race was formed 
in no dependence on what the more privileged section might attempt, or 
not attempt, for them ; firmed indeed in a perfect foresight of what would 
not be attempted. How plain is it, that the case has its reason and its 
mystery in something far deeper than any consideration of what they 
might have done, and neglected to do. How self-evident the proposition, 
that if the sovereign Arbiter had intended the salvation of the race, it 
must have been accomplished. 

I really know not what apology to devise for this long intrusion on you, 
if you will not accept it as an excuse to say, I had no intention or ex¬ 
pectation it should be anything like half as long; and that I am sorry 
for not having the faculty or art of saying what I want to be at in a few 
words. I can, however, say, in words few and most explicit, that I de¬ 
precate causing you the trouble of making any kind of reply, however 
brief. I need not say that I am nobody for anything like controversial 
discussion. If your candor will just excuse this transient incursion 
across the path of your studies, it is all that is requested by, my dear sir, 
yours with high respect, cordial regard, and all good wishes, 

J. Foster. 

ment which is supposed to be designed to distinguish between them. I do 
not believe, indeed, that “ the mind will be its own place ” literally; that 
is, that there will be no objective. Lot I do believe that every man will 
“ go to his own place,” and that this place will be the exact counterpart of 
his moral character. So that while some will be “ beaten with many 
stripes,” we believe that for the minimum of guilt there will be a mini¬ 
mum of punishment. J* H. 


292 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CCXXXIII. TO MR. JOHN FOSTER. / 

Bourton, October 1, 1842. 

Dear Nephew,— . ... I am glad you have such advantages for 
attendance on the means of grace, and though some of you prefer one 
place and sect, and some another, I have no doubt you agree in the main 
thing, and preserve family peace. 

.... Three of you, it seems, are come into family cares and duties. 
I wish that wisdom and resolution may be given you to act worthily in 
that situation, and I wish that your families may rise up to be a blessing 
to you, and good and happy in themselves. You have great need to pray 
for the divine blessing on the parents and the children. I am some¬ 
times willing to hope that the thousands of petitions offered to God by 
my pious parents, and your grandfather and mother, for the welfare of us, 
their descendauts, may even thus long afterwards be of some avail with 
their God and ours. But our own prayers for ourselves and our children 
must continually ascend to him, pleading in the name and merits of our 
Lord and Saviour. 

It often comes into my thoughts how much good of the highest kind 
would have been obtained, if I had been as constantly earnest as I ought 
to have been in that most profitable of all exercises. At the age of every 
one of us there is room to mend in this important matter; and I hope and 
pray that we may not neglect it. 

.... Give my kind respects to your mother, whom I congratulate on 
having been so highly favored in point of health, and in having such 
worthy children around her. To William also I would express all 
friendly good wishes for his welfare in all respects, and the same you 
will yourself accept from your old uncle, whom you have never seen, 
and who has never seen you, nor probably will in this world, and whose 
name is, like your own, 

John Foster. 


CCXXXIV. TO THE REV. THOMAS GRINFIELD, M.A. 

December 22, 1842. 

My dear Sir,— Before submitting the few slight notices of your 
preface, let me be allowed to apologize for what I am afraid was a great 

rudeness in my matter of putting Mr.-“ out of court.'*'’ 

The case is, that I have no patience with the outcries raised by cler¬ 
gymen in, about, against their own church; their multiform dissensions; 
their mutual accusations and protestations ; the insubordination and re¬ 
monstrances of the inferiors against the consecrated authorities in high 
places, &c. One is provoked to say. Shame on you ;—why do you not 
strive with the utmost care to hush up your subjects of disturbance, 
and maintain at least the appearance of a dignified union and conformity, 
according to the declared object of your institution, and under the sane- 



LETTERS. 


293 


tion of its most venerable order ? Have you not a grand standard of faith 
and discipline sacredly preserved, unaltered from generation to genera¬ 
tion ; appointed for the express purpose of maintaining inviolate the 
Christian doctrine and practical institutions, to which, in its most com¬ 
prehensive application, you all solemnly engage your assent and fidelity ? 
I must in mere decency believe it is not a Jesuitical juggle, but a care¬ 
fully explicit formula of doctrines and prescriptions ; and also I must in 
decency believe that you have signed your adhesion intelligently and 
honestly. Is it not most scandalous then, that you should be seen as a 
body, all in confusion; section in conflict with section; your rule of faith 
interpreted in every arbitrary mode, with mutual accusations of pervert¬ 
ing it; and with loud complaints from some of you of twenty things 
wrong in either the constitution or the administration of the church ? 
Pray try to come, if possible, to such an understanding among yourselves, 
that you may no longer stand before the nation in a condition which, 
taken in conjunction with your solemn pledge to conformity, must ex¬ 
pose you to op{)robrium. We dissenters having no standard of confor¬ 
mity, having no high prelatical authorities over us, may sectarianize and 
fight as much as we please; but for you, under the solemn obligations you 
have taken upon you, to exhibit yourselves in such lawless commotion— 
is not to be tolerated. You should either maintain the peace of the 
church, or come out of it; for as to altering it to the mind of any one^ or 
any sect of yoM, that would be an idle dream. 

It was under the habit of such kind of feelings, that I was indisposed to 

hear the remonstrant lamentation of good Mr.-. More than enough 

of this. 

In the department of Christian morality, I think many of those who 
are distinguished as evangelical preachers greatly and culpably deficient. 
They rarely, if ever, take some one topic of moral duty as—honesty, 
veracity, impartiality, Christian temper, forgiveness of injuries, temper¬ 
ance (in any of its branches), the improvement of time, and investigate 
specifically its principle, rules, discriminations, adaptations. There is 
none of the casuistry found in many of the old divines. Such discus¬ 
sions would have cost far more labor of thought than dwelling and ex¬ 
patiating on the general evangelical doctrines; but would have been 
eminently useful; and it is very necessary, in order to set people’s judg¬ 
ments and consciences to rights. It is partly in consequence of this 
neglect (very general, I believe) that many religious kind of people have 
unfixed and ill-fated apprehensions of moral discriminations. Hall told 
Anderson that in former years he had oftener insisted on subjects of this 
order: * I know not whence the ill-judged alteration, during his resi- 

* “ Be not afraid of devoting whole sermons to particular parts of moral 
conduct and religious duties. It is impossible to give right views of them, 
unless you dissect characters, and describe particular virtues and vices. 
‘The fruits of the flesh’ and ‘ the fruits of the Spirit must be distinctly 
pointed out.’ To preach against sin in general, without descending to par- 


294 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


dence at Bristol; to judge from so much as I heard. He could hardly 
have fallen in with the common notion ; “ Lead them to the true evange¬ 
lical principles of doctrine, and the morals will follow of themselves.” I 
would answer, “ If so, how superfluous is a large portion of the New 
Testament, as being specifically and often minutely preceptive /” 


CCXXXV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

Stapleto7i, December 24, 1S42. 

My dear Sir,— I am glad to find you safely settled in your temporary 
domicile (you can understand the interest I have in so describing it). 
After passing once again over several score of leagues of this unhappy 
planet, I am wishing you may but once more make that same traverse ; 
so that in that once more you may say to the hills, the streams, the 
towns, the inns, the bridges, as you shall pass them, adieu. The thought 
has often come on me, on my occasional journeys, as one thing and ano¬ 
ther has passed my view, “ I shall see that no more !” And this senti¬ 
ment becomes more distinctly felt in the late decline of life, not only be¬ 
cause the shortened residue of life renders it of course less likely that jour¬ 
neys will be repeated, but also because there is a peculiar pensiveness, 
an evening shade, over the general tone of feeling. 

. : . . The town is become to me very nearly as if uninhabited ; and 
beside my walking faculty is strangely diminished within the year now 
so near an end; and also the time of going after books, looking in at 
auctions, &c., is nearly gone by. From necessity it is so at present with 
you, and I hope will be so, when you shall find again much more oppor¬ 
tunity for indulging the folly. ^ folly, I repeat with grievous emphasis, 
when I look round on this room, wondering how I could ever be so be¬ 
sotted as not to see the impossibility of reading the long accumulation ; 
and mine is a more bitter repentance than yours can be, for you have 
dealt on saving terms, while I have foolishly expended money which 
often was wanted for other uses, and in a quantity which would have 
been valuable for those uses. 

Have you wholly given up the project and task of making some uso 
of the Diaries of a pious man ? You may do so, and little more will be 
said. It is very curious to observe how the first eagerness for publish¬ 
ing something about a good man has quieted down after the project had 
been kept for some time in abeyance. There is something melancholy 
in this, as showing how the warm memory of the good can decline by 
degrees to a comparative indifTerence, even when there is not a real 
change in the judgment of their worthiness. In a little while after our 
departure, how very, very few will feel a painful sense of wanting us. 

ticulars, may lead many to complain of the evil of their hearts, while, at 
the same time, they are awfully inattentive to the evil of their conduct.”— 
Hall’s Charge to the Rev. J. K. Hall. Works, iv., 483. 




LETTERS.. 


295 


ft will bo confined to some three or four (if not still fewer) who had a 
cordial, deep attachment to us from relationship, or the most intimate 
kind of friendship. One has a feeling, that it would be gratifying to be 
so remembered by these few that, in their advance toward the end of 
life, they should be delighted with the thought and expectation of meet¬ 
ing us again elsewhere. You have such remembrances of the departed, 
remembrances cherished in the depth of the heart, thus placing you in 
an affectionate relation to a world unseen. 

Our sense of deprivation in the loss of persons who were dear to us, 
is soothed by the thought, that there are so much fewer to feel anxious 
for in leaving them behind. In this matter I have the advantage (in this 
particular view I may rightly call it so) over many, in having only these 
two of my family to leave exposed to the ills of life in this wretched 
world ; and you have the advantage over me. One, chiefly, will be the 
object of your last solicitudes. I do not say, that I could wish myself 
in the same case ; but I have often thought, that to see my children 
safely and happily out of the world would be a very strong consolation 
for their loss. But, we must not distrust that all-sufficient Providence 
in which we profess so firmly to believe. 

The strangely wild and almost vernal temperature (a delightful sun¬ 
shine while I am writing) seems to promise that the old year shall go 
off in smiles, and even in buds and flowers,—an alleviating circumstance 
to ill-clad, ill-housed poverty. In alleviation of this, one is now hoping 

that something will ere long be done by man .Glad to see what a 

strong and wide excitement is produced by the operations of the 
“League,” aided by calamitous experience. There seems to be an 
universally confident expectation of the abolition, at no distant time, of 

that detestable incubus on the nation’s prosperity, the Corn law. 

[The] Premiei' must make stout fight for it yet awhile, in order to stand 
well with his gang; at the same time that I believe there is no man in 
England more fully convinced that it is a nuisance which ought to be 
abated. 


CCXXXVI. TO w. L. R. CATES^ ESQ. 

December 30, 1842. 

Dear Sir, —You will naturally, and indeed inevitably, have considered 
your not receiving any acknowledgment of your friendly letter, of a date 
so very far back, as a proof (I need not say of so plain a fact as a very 
defective civility, but) of great want of kind and benevolent feeling. 
This interpretation would be so reasonable, according to fair and usual 
rules of judging, that I am reduced to the hope that you may be able to 
believe me, when I assure you, it would entirely be a mistake. 

If I were to attempt to explain how, then, such a thing could happen, 
I should have to confess to you such a power of the besetting sin of 
'procrastination, as I hope your own experience cannot, and never will 





296 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


enable you to conceive. It would be an exhibition amusing to the spec¬ 
tator, but mortifying enough to me, if it could be shown how many hun¬ 
dreds or thousands of things which I acknowledged proper to be done, 
was disposed to do, and intended to do, to-morrow, were not done in due 
time, or not done at all. Defer the thing once, defer it now, and there is 
no knowing when its time will come. If one imitated any other person’s 
bad example, as submissively as one imitates one’s own, what a con¬ 
temptible servility it would seem. 

It is gratifying to be held in cordial esteem by a person of intelligent 
and serious mind, even when personally unknown. At the same time I 
would wish to be something better than •flattered, by the assurance of 
having been happy enough to render a material service to such a mind. 
A benefit conveyed through a silent channel, in a direction of which I 
could have no conjecture, to your mind from mine, making me, as it were, 
a sharer in a good with a person I have never seen, and may never see, 
I would account a favor conferred on me by a good Providence. Your 
name will be remembered as affording one pleasing assurance that I 
have not lived altogether in vain. 

Presuming that you may not be advanced very far on in life, I hope 
you have yet a prolonged course before you for making the best and 
happiest use of life ; and I trust that a numerous train of advantages 
will be afforded to you for accomplishing that great purpose. 

With sincerest wishes and prayers that it may be so, 

I am, dear sir, very truly yours, 

J. Foster. 


CCXXXVII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

January 31, 1843. 

My dear Sir,— Considering what an infinite multiplicity of things is 
taking place in the surrounding world, one finds one’s own insignificance 
in having so little for one’s own part to recount. To live through the day, 
in ordinary habits, to sleep through the night, continuing and repeatino- 
this through the week, through the month, with very occasionally a call 
by an acquaintance, and a letter from a distance; and thus a short life 
is wearing away. 

.... What a vast transition it is from one’s own little share of good 
and ill to that of the national millions, whose interests are this week 
portentously coming in question, and under no hopeful auspices. The 
settled expectation seems to be that the hateful and demented party are 
10 carry it ail their own way, for at least one year more of aggravated 
national calamity. One can sometimes almost wonder that the righteous 
Sovereign does not strike such a combination in iniquity with some 
evident, signal mark of avenging justice. But this is not now, as of old, 
the order of his government. There is the sad consideration, besides’ 
that the suffering part of the nation are, for the greatest part, in no con- 




LETTERS. 


297 


dition to appeal to Heaven, being no less strangers to the knowledge and 
fear of God than the class under whose iniquity they are suffering. The 
most melancholy consideration as to the suffering masses is, that their 
afflictions can have no tendency to do them good in respect to a higher 
interest, but powerfully the very contrary—tending to alienate their 
minds from any belief in Providence, and to generate a spirit of reck¬ 
lessness, contempt of law, and intense revenge. They are alienated 
from all observances of religion by their squalid condition, and their 
children are deprived of education. If they could be suddenly thrown 
loose, as in the French Revolution, with what a dreadful fury would 
they rush on the proud, splendid, sumptuous ranks that have been tread¬ 
ing them to the earth. It will, after all, be strange if the cup of bitter¬ 
ness shall not yet come round to them even in this world.One 

goes fully along with the animated spirit of the Anti-Corn-law League ; 
confident that they are working a commotion, before which monopoly 
will be prostrated at no far-off time. It will be interesting to have the 
collective manifestation, in their grand meetings of this week, of the 
effects already produced, and the plans and means for prosecuting and 
extending the war. 


CCXXXVIII. TO MRS. HOLBROOKE. 

Stapleton^ near Bristol, March 30,1843. 

My dear old Friend, —For it is a long, long time to look back 
upon since the friendship was young, —I was exceedingly gratified at 
receiving your letter—dilatory as I have been in acknowledging it, and 
as I am in everything I ought to do with despatch. It was a strange 
and pleasing surprise to see at the end of it the name of Fanny Purser. 
It gratified me that the said Fanny Purser should, through so wide an 
interval, have remembered me with so kind a feeling as should induce 
her to write to me. This feeling was excited by the mere sight of the 
name; and it became quite animated as I read the friendly sentiments 
expressed in the letter. I could not have flattered myself that I had 
been so well, so long, and so very kindly remembered. 

What a distant retrospect, and how many remembrances and associa¬ 
tions—your excellent parents,—Henry Strahan,—Mrs. Butler,—our talks 
and amusements,—the places and change of habitations,—your brother 
a boy,—yourself a girl, hardly fifteen perhaps, the last time I saw you. 
In the case of your brother, when I heard from him at an advanced pe¬ 
riod of life, I was wondering what manner of personal appearance he 
might have grown and passed into, in the course of so many years, while 
I could not bring him to my mind in any other image than that only one 
which I so well remembered ; and even after seeing him at last, I re¬ 
mained in a kind of baffle between that perfectly preserved image, and 
his actual appearance as a more than middle-aged man. Of you, also, I 
can have only the one image in my mind ; and I am thinking and won- 




298 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


dering what would be the difference, if the present reality were to appear 
before me. In him I did descry some trace of the original aspect, under 
the vast difference. If I had a like opportunity I should be interested 
and curious in making such inspection and comparison in the case of his 
sister. It really does seem something strange to think of Fanny as a 
grandmother ! What a succession of broad stages one has to imagine 
between! So many individual and social changes, so many deliberations, 
determinations, movements, occupations, duties, cares, pleasing and 
painful experiences. So many dispensations of Providence, so many 
occasions for relying on that Providence, so many times and sub¬ 
jects for serious reflection, so many, and some of them severe, lessons 
of instructive experience. It would be interesting to hear you teU 
the difference between your youthful anticipations of life, and your 
views of it as resulting from what you have experienced and wit¬ 
nessed in the progress through so long an interval. What is the 
difference in this respect between yourself and your daughter ? Have 
you occasion sometimes to smile at the promises with which she hears 
the future flattering her ? Have you to say to her—“ My dear child, you 
will find it out in due time ?” Is she incredulous, sometimes, to what 
you have to tell her from having had so many more reflections, and feel¬ 
ings, and trials ? But perhaps she is not of a sanguine temperament, 
and I am very willing to believe that you are not of a gloomy one, not¬ 
withstanding the share that has been appointed you of mournful experi¬ 
ence. I rejoice to see you in possession of the one grand resource 
against both the ills of life and the fear of death; and that you share 
this happiness with your daughter and her husband. In respect to this 
great interest you have the happiness to be as in communion with those 
who have gone before you, your estimable parents, and with the remain¬ 
ing estimable relation, your brother. The time is hastening on when 
that communion will be wholly translated to a happier world, and there 
exalted and perpetuated. I pray that I maynot myself be wanting to it. 

It is highly gratifying to think of your brother (the boy in my tena¬ 
cious imagination), so worthy in character, so favored in his course of 
life, and so singularly happy in his family—I think beyond any other 
example that I have known ; for, as you say, all his children seem to be 
such as he would desire. I hope their descendants will be such as to 
bring no unfavorable change into the history of the family. 

I was expressing some small degree of wonder that, on the loss of 
him who had been the cause of your leaving Ireland, you had not been 
disposed to return; when he plainly indica.ted how you had stronger 
reasons to remain where you have found a little circle of friendly, social 
interests. Over every inteiest there must have spread a gloomy shade, 
for tlie present and some time past, in your town and neighborhood, from 
the fearful state of suffering and disturbance. 

I should greatly like to see you; I should, as in the case of your bro 
thcr, fix and settle in my mind and imagination who you are; for I find 



LETTERS. 


299 


myself addressing an equivocal somebody between the good, pleasing little 
girl Fanny Purser, and a certain sedate, matronly personage, a grand¬ 
mother of the age of fifty-seven. I hope many years are yet added to 
that account, moderately happy, and finally concluding in something in¬ 
comparably happier than anything on earth. 

I will repeat how very greatly I am gratified by your kind letter; and 
shall be so again if at any time you shall feel disposed to favor me. I 
wish you had mentioned the remembered things that you say “ would have 
made me smile.” It would have been very curious to see whether my 
own very miserable memory had retained them. It does retain many 
particulars of these remote times, and some of them vividly. 

My dear Fanny, as I like to call you, I commend you and yours to our 
heavenly Father, and repeat to you how truly I am your cordial and 
much gratified friend, 

J. Foster. 


CCXXXIX. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

• Monday Evening, 1843. 

My dear Sir, — .... We are not suffered to go to sleep, like our 
forefatliers, in the dull quiet of their times. We should be able to live 
on “ agitation,”—for we are to have nothing else. The Corn-law agita¬ 
tion—Education agitation—Puseyism agitation—Scotch church agitation 
—and, most portentous of all; Irish agitation. One cannot yet believe 
that the government will persist in the education scheme, in defiance of 
a vaster number of petitions (the Speaker has said) than ever crowded in 
on any former occasion, and nearly all on one side. If the thing really is, 
after all, to be forced through, on the strength of a besotted and unprinci¬ 
pled majority, it will have the good effect of embodying and embattling the 
dissenters (in which they have been deficient) to a degree never yet ap¬ 
proached. And it will no longer allow them to be numerically under¬ 
rated as they have constantly and wilfully been hitherto by the church 
party. It is sadly to be feared that the Methodists will have forfeited the 
favor into which they have latterly been growing, and are very desirous 
to grow, with that party.The anti-corn-law [league],—an admi¬ 

rable organ and system of agitation, which will doubtless be successful 
at no distant time. The Irish affair is formidable and alarming ; can it 
end otherwise than in some fearful catastrophe ? The object is surely 
wild and impracticable ; but the prodigious national excitement—resist¬ 
ed, defied, and still more inflamed, what form of action will or can it take 
to come to any definite issue ? It cannot be persuaded, legislated, or 
threatened, into quiet surrender. And if so, what is there for it but a 
wide, sanguinary, military execution, followed by all kinds of oppression, 
and an implacable, ever-burning hatred 7 ... . 



300 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CCXL. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 


1843. 

.... No doubt you have seen a petition, in pathetic terms, in behalf 
of the Scotch Church, adopted by tlie elite of the Sanhedrim. One would 
have given something much more considerable than the “ smallest coin 
of the realm” to overhear the consultation. How comes the Scotch 
church to be anything to them ? While not a hoof of them is admissible 
into any establishment, and while their sect hardly makes any w’ay in 
Scotland, are they so besotted to the principle of ecclesiastical establish¬ 
ments that they can noichere see without horror the signs of their decline, 
lest, before the time for eliecting their own establishment, the whole 
thing should have gone out of the world ? 

One shall await with great curiosity the upshot of that Scotch busi¬ 
ness. I have much distrusted the heroics of it from the first. Just now 
they seem as if coming up to the mark. But last week there was here 
an intelligent Scotch Presbyterian, who greatly doubted whether more 
than the merest scantling of the pledged 500 would bo the self-exiles 
out of the land of Canaan. The ministry, it seems, are willing to con¬ 
cede some inconsiderable point, on a question “ quoad sacra ” (which I 
cannot understand), and he thinks that, affecting to regard this as a 
great concession, they will contrive to find it both conscientious and 
jprudent to stay where they are. He observed, what is self-evident 
enough, in what a most desolate condition very many of the poorer 
ministers and parishes must fall into, if practically ])ersisting in the 
recusancy. At all events, however, he said, a great and irreparable 
damage will have been done to that establishment. The kirk must regard 
this shock of earthquake as a warning intimation of more to come, and 
an ultimate downfall. As a hastening of that catastrophe, I have been 
wishing, all along, that the mal-contents might persist and complete their 
rebellion. 

The two sisterly churches ought to sympathize ; for our own is going 
fast to an opprobrious plight. It will be some time before the dissenters 
will hear again of the grand boast that the purpose and the effect of the 
establishment is to preserve the integrity and uniformity of the faith 
among the people. There are the old standard formalist body—the evan¬ 
gelicals—the Puseyites,—the last, according to all reports, making a tri¬ 
umphant progress. It is really quite time for the Methodist magnates to 
get up another petition—a passionate entreaty that something may be 
done or tried to save the English church from ruin. But, as in the case 
of Baal’s worshippers, nobody will stir. Bishops, with small exceptions, 
seem determined, or at least content, to doze in their mitres. The 
inferior dignitaries must nod acquiescence, such of them as are not them¬ 
selves in the movement; and statesmen have something else to look 
after. The dissenters may look on, delighted at the disturbance and 
peril of what has been continually boasted as built on a rock. 


LETTERS. 


301 


Something is to be attempted for education; but one can have no faith 
in its compass or efficacy. It will be a church business from top to bot¬ 
tom—if indeed it be done at all. Thei accounts (which seem to have 
suggested the scheme) of the condition of the laboring classes, are 
horrid enough, in all respects, physical, mental, and moral. In their 
present physical state there can be no education. Creatures starving, in 
dirty rags, and herded in loathsome huts, and cellars, are in no state for 
intellectual cultivation. 


CCXLI. TO JOSEPH COTTLE, ESQ. 


June 22, 1S‘J3. 

Past the longest day ! The thought strikes once more into the mind, 
how desperately rapid the flight of time ! The shortest day hangs on iny 
memory as if it were but a few weeks back. To a certainty, and at the 
very utmost reckoning, how few times more shall we pass either of these 
marked points of time. How soon after the entrance on Eternity will 
these little marks and measures of Time cease to be of any account— 
unless perhaps, and possibly, they be noted and numbered by us in refer¬ 
ence to the succession of events in the world we shall have left, on 
supposition, not improbable, that information of those events will be 
brought to the inhabitants of the other world ;—or in reference to the 
predicted periods of the future events in the great progress of the divine 
government on earth, looking on to the conclusion. As prophecy has 
disclosed something of this great scheme for our information and instruc¬ 
tion while we stay here, is it not probable that prophecy will exhibit 
those futurities with a stronger light to the happy and enlightened spirits 
in the higher regions ? 


CCXLII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. 

August 31, 1843. 

.... After this proposed excursion you will have to think of prepar¬ 
ing once more to sit down for the winter —unwelcome name and thing ! 
I hope you have a thorough pleasant apartment for fire, candle, books 
and Catherine; the last as indispensable (and that is saying much) as 
the first. But what would you do in the supposed quandary—you shall 
pass a whole rigorous week in winter without fire, or without Catherine ? 
I see you will neatly evade the question, by saying that, by the supposi¬ 
tion, the infliction of the cold on yourself, would be its infliction on 
Catherine also, and that this would be a piece of unpardonable barbarity. 

You never name anything you have been reading. Among your heaps 
you doubtless have Wilberforce^s noted book ;—and I may presume you 
have read it some time or other, though I never did, but very partially, 
till within these few weeks. Superfluous to say it is a work of great 
value ; faithful to a high standard of the Christian doctrine and morals, 




302 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


Bearching and courageous to expose a fearful prevalence of real and 
fatal irreligion under the Christian name and formalities. His fellow 
politicians must have been strangely astounded at the appearance of such 
a prodigy in their hemisphere. 

Here the weather for some days past has been of very inauspicious omen 
for the harvest. How disastrous if it should continue so, and inflict the 

completing aggravation to the miseries of the people.While the 

people are in such misery, their legislators are gaily scattering over the 
country for their rural festivities, their field sports,.their watering-places, 
their excursions to all parts of the Continent, totally reckless of the 
people and the national interests. 

I see in the Morning Chronicle to-day that you have got Rebecca at 
your gates ; a commotion that seems to laugh all your wiseacres to scorn. 
I suppose it is quite evident, as I have seen stated, it arose as a reaction 
against a wicked management of ’squires, magistrates, &c., to lighten 
the tolls on the great roads where their equipages rolled along, and lay 
them, in monstrous disproportion, on the secondary and cross roads chiefly 
used by farmers and tradesmen. For these it was in vain to remon¬ 
strate, and appeal to magistracy, law, and so forth ; and therefore it was 
quite time for them to take law into their own hands. They commit 
much injustice in their turn ; still the probability is, that the result at 
last will be a much more equitable apportionment of the road-tax, and a 
mortifying conviction in the higher folk that they are really not to have 
everything their own way. 


CCXLIII. TO SIR JOHN EASTHOPE, BART., M.P. 

Stapleton^ Thursday, October 3, 1843. 
My dear Friend,— .... Short as is the interval since I wrote, it 
has made a material change in my condition. I adverted to the plainly 
approaching termination of life, and perhaps named a year or two. But 
the indications have latterly become so express, that I now have not the 
smallest expectation of surviving a very few months. The great and 
pressing business is, therefore, to prepare for the event. That is, in 
truth, our great business always; but it is peculiarly enforced in a 
situation like mine. It involves a review of past life ; and oh how much 
there is to render reflection painful and alarming. Such a review would 
consign me to utter despair, but for my firm belief in the all-sufficiency 

of the mediation of our Lord. 

My very dear friend, make the one thing needful the great practical 
object. Accept this simple wish; I feel my mind quite incapable of 
seeking anything more interesting to say to you. 

I rather hope you will be still prevented coming hither. I can hardly 







LETTERS. 


308 


say I should be glad to see you. I cannot maintain any length of talk¬ 
ing, its effect is so mischievous on the cough, and in other ways. 

I will not yet say, farewell. 

J. Foster. 


CCXLIV. TO SIR JOHN EASTHOPE, BART., M.P. 

Stapleton, October .*5, 1843. 

My dear Friend,— A note received from you through the hands of 

-, expresses a wish for an interview, on condition that it might not 

injuriously affect the extreme debility into which I am rapidly sunk. 

I say rapidly; for it can be but few weeks since I spoke of a few 
months as likely to bring the conclusion. In a later letter I may have 
narrowed the interval. But now my report would be, that I cannot think 
it possible to survive many days. 

In such a state of prostration, it is impossible for me to hold any com¬ 
munication for more than a very brief space of time.The case 

being such, my dear friend, I do think it will be better to decline the 
interview, so acceptable as it would have been in other circumstances. 

Before you will have returned from the Continent I shall have made 
a much greater and more mysterious journey.—After some years, I wish 
they may not be few, you will be called to follow me. And may God 
grant, through the infinite merits of Christ, that we may find ourselves 
in a far happier world.—Among my last good wishes will be those for the 
happiness, and the piety of all your family. 

And now, my dear friend, I commend you to the God of mercy, and 
very affectionately bid you 


Farewell. 





304 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


CHAPTER X. 

MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS ON BIR. FOSTEr’s CHARACTER. 

Without any attempt at a formal and critical delineation of 
Mr. Foster’s character, it may render the materials for making 
such an estimate more complete, to present a few particulars rela¬ 
tive to his private habits and tastes, which could not be conve¬ 
niently interwoven with the preceding narrative. 

His intense sympathy with nature appears to have been drst 
awakened by the grand and awful,* but as In’s faculties matured 
the love and admiration of the beautiful became not less vivid. 
He took great delight in all flowers, but especially in tho more 
delicate, retiring, and minute. In the spring he anxiously 
watched for the appearance of the first snow-drop, crocus, prim¬ 
rose, or buttercup; this last, indeed, he regarded with a feeling 
more of sadness than of pleasure, from its betokening the far ad¬ 
vance of the season. Sometimes, on returning from a walk he 
would say in a tone of concern, “ I’ve seen a fearful sight to-day ; 
—I’ve seen a buttercup !” He scarcely ever gathered any flow¬ 
ers, disliking to occasion their premature decay. 

He felt a delight, amounting almost to fascination, in colors of 
all kinds, whether delicate tints, dazzling showy colors, or deep 
sombre hues. 

He had great susceptibility to the “ skyey influences,” and 
often remarked how much less any given space of time was worth 
in dreary, inclement weather. He used to say that it depressed 
all his faculties, independently of the low temperature. 

He did not possess any scientific acquaintance with music, for 
which he had no ear ; yet was passionately fond of some kinds of 
it, especially of the mournful and solemn. He used to wonder 
that it should be thought impossible for a person who, technically 
speaking, had no ear, to feel an interest in music, and strongly 
asserted the power it could exercise over himself to inspire almost 


* Vide vol. i., p. 3. 


OBSERVATIONS ON HIS CHARACTER. 


305 


every description of sentiment. He was never tired of hearing 
anything that pleased him, but would ask for it again and again. 
He felt more interested in instrumental than in vocal music, and 
his favorite instrument was the organ. 

In connection with his taste for graphical works,* may be no¬ 
ticed the costly binding he bestowed upon them. His directions 
to the binder were given with a minute exactness which showed 
a familiarity with the process of the art, and great taste in the 
ornamental adjustments; this was only one mode of gratifying 
his perceptions of the beautiful, and arose in no degree from a 
fondness for display. Indeed he preferred that elegant works 
should be kept out of sight, till wanted for particular inspection. 
One day, noticing that several volumes had been placed on a 
table so as to show their exterior to the greatest advantage, he 
playfully said, “ i’d put these books somewhere else; I’ve a 
proud modesty that disdains show.” 

His humanity to animals was great; and it might as justly be 
affirmed of him as of another venerable person, that “ his sensi¬ 
bility produced a quick and powerful sympathy with the whole 
circle of animated Nature.”f Of this the following is an instance. 
He once found a small bat in the garden whose wings had been 
injured sufficiently to prevent its flying, and yet not so much, but 
that he thought it might recover in a little time. He therefore 
brought it within doors, fitted up a box for it, and put it in his 
study that it might be out of the way of molestation, intending to 
keep it there till it should be able to fly again. However, he 
soon found that there was no chance of its recovery, and thought 
it more humane to destroy it. 

He had a great dislike to fancy-work, as a sad misappropriation 
of time. Once when shown a piece of worsted work with a great 
deal of red in it, he said “ it was red with the blood of murdered 
time.” In household furniture, though from motives of economy 
he would have studied the utmost plainness, yet he also thought 
that taste was wasted when carried to any great extent on such 
things. 

He was remarkable for civility and kindness to small trades¬ 
men and work-people ; he used to complain that women were 
generally underpaid, and would often give them more than they 
asked. He abhorred driving a bargain with poor persons. When 

* Vide Letters cviii., clxii., exevi., ccxxix., in this volume. 

t Hall’s Funeral Sermon for Dr. Ryland. Works, 395. 


306 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


sometimes shown small wares brought to the door for sale, on 
being told the price, he would say, “ Oh, give them a few pence 
more ; —see—there’s a great deal of work here ; it must have 
taken some time to make.” And he would turn the article, what¬ 
ever it might be, in every direction, and find out all the little 
ingenuities or ornaments about it. With regard to persons serv- 
ing in shops he was very considerate, and would insist on the im¬ 
propriety of occasioning needless trouble to them in showing their 
goods, or in sending small purchases to a distance. He has been 
known to go back to a shop, and pay something more for what he 
thought had been sold to him too cheaply. “ It isn’t often we 
meet with persons that do that, Sir,” was the remark of a young 
woman on his turning back, and paying a shilling more for a 
litliograph which he had just bought. 

He always spoke with great charity of the minor offences— 
particularly petty thefts committed by persons decent and honest 
in the main, when under the hard pressure of poverty. If any¬ 
thing of the sort were mentioned to him in a tone of condemna¬ 
tion, he would generally say, “ one has great compassion for per¬ 
sons in such a miserable condition,”—“ one deeply deplores that 
decent people should be driven to such straits,”—or something to 
that effect. 

If he had been told of persons in peculiar distress, though he 
had scarcely any personal acquaintance with them, or even knew 
them only by name, he seemed constantly to keep them in re¬ 
membrance, would often inquire after them, and make evident 
allusions to them in his family prayers. His delicate regard to 
the feelings of others was most exemplary, in rendering acts of 
kindness and benevolence, especially of a pecuniary kind. He 
endeavored in some ingenious manner to make it appear that he 
was the favored person, so sedulous was he not to excite a painful 
sense of obligation. From an over-anxiety on this point he sought 
to prevent, if possible, the expressions of gratitude from reaching 
him. During his residence at Frome, in visiting the poor mem¬ 
bers of his congregation, he commonly took a small parcel of tea 
with him, requesting them to make him a good cup ; and on leav¬ 
ing, would adroitly slide half-a-crown under his saucer. On one 
occasion when he had transmitted, quite spontaneously and unex¬ 
pectedly, a handsome donation to a person in a respectable sta¬ 
tion, but with limited means, he added a “ most peremptory in¬ 
junction that he might never be mortified, by one syllable or hint 
in any way or time, of acknowledgment for so mere a trifle.” 


OBSERVATIONS ON HIS CHARACTER. 


307 


He was extremely quick in appreciating every little proof of 
recollection and regard which was shown him by his friends. 
Small presents, snuff'-boxes and the like, he used to set a great 
value on. He generally had two or three in use at the same 
time, and now and then would put one back in the drawer where 
they were kept, and bring out another, so that all might come 
into use. All kind letters and messages seemed to have a more 
than ordinary value in his estimation. 

On being first introduced to him, a stranger would be struck 
with the unostentatious and perfectly simple address—the fami¬ 
liar idiomatic phrases—the deep and almost muffled tone of voice, 
and the occasional searching glance cast over the spectacles from 
eyes “ charged with thought ’’—the whole manner and posture 
indicating habitual meditativeness. In large mixed companies 
he was not very ready to converse. It was mostly in the pre¬ 
sence of two or three friends that the energy, originality and 
varied opulence of his mind, were disclosed. Those who listened 
to him, obtained not the mere knowledge of facts or arguments, 
but were trained to view men and things in their higher and more 
spiritual relations. On topics which lie within the province of 
the understanding rather than of sentiment or feeling, nothing 
crude or vague satisfied his mind ; and thus, while intent on ob¬ 
taining clear views himself, he unconsciously disciplined those 
who conversed with him to aim at a similar precision of thought. 

Though he was not remarkable for a mere verbal memory, he 
had at command an ample assemblage of facts supplied by his 
extensive reading. On one occasion he had been silent in a cir¬ 
cle where there had been a long and unsatisfactory debate on 
mummies. At length he came out with a few quiet interroga¬ 
tions, and the disputants soon found they had been exposing their 
shallowness to one who, as a person present remarked, seemed as 
if he had made this topic the study of his life ; in fact his infor¬ 
mation respecting it was very extensive, and it would be hardly 
possible to express too strongly the degree of interest which he 
took in this class of antiquities. “ Ancmit Egypt,’’ he remarks 
in one of his review^s, “ surpasses every tract of the world (we 
know not that Palestine is an exception) in the power of fascmat- 
ing a contemplative spirit.’’ This was eminently the case with 
himself. 

At another time a missionary from the South Sea Islands called 
upon him, who had been previously complaining of the scanty 


308 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


acquaintance with the history and geography of those regions^ 
evinced by some who were esteemed highly literary men and ac¬ 
complished scholars. But in Mr. Foster’s company he had such 
questions put and information given, that he came away with a 
humiliating impression of his own comparative ignorance. 

Mr. Foster seldom, if ever, indulged in verbal wit. He once 
called the world ‘^an untamed and untamable animal and on 
being reminded that he was a part of it, and therefore had an in¬ 
terest in its welfare, rejoined, “ Yes, sir, a hair upon the tail.” On 
insincerity, affectation, and cant, he was unsparingly sarcastic. 
Some years ago, the Emperor Alexander’s piety was a favorite 
theme at public meetings. A person who received the statements 
on this point with (as Foster thought) a far too easy -faith, re¬ 
marked to him, that really the Emperor must be a very good 
man! “Yes, sir,” he replied gravely, but with a significant 
glance, “ a very good man—very devout; no doubt he said grace 
before he swallowed Poland !” 

“ His inclination ever led him,” it has been remarked by an 
able observer, “ to what was real and tangible in thought, to the 
rejection of all discussions which had no more than a merely logi¬ 
cal and metaphysical interest to recommend them. He could not 
dispense with having distinct sensuous conceptions, and with this 
predominant bias it would have been strange indeed, if he had 
taken up with ardor the study of the scholastic authors, or the 
merely ratiocinative class of metaphysicians. Yet this did not 
infer an exclusive devotion to the practical ; on the contrary, he 
loved to expatiate in speculations, respecting, for example, the 
future state, where the understanding can find no secure footing, 
and where the practical interest is certainly very small. But he 
must have before his mind what was real either in actual fact, or 
in imagination ; the mere beings of the reason [eniia ralionalid) he 
could not fail to regard with an indifference, which, in the eyes of 
Plato, would have cut him off from all title to the name of philo¬ 
sopher. In this respect there seems to be a singular contrast be¬ 
tween Mr. Foster and the sublime genius of Athens. And yet, 
so eager was Mr. Foster in speculating upon the prospect of man 
beyond the grave, that, very possibly, if he had not possessed the 
unspeakable blessing of a divine revelation, he likewise would 
have applied, as Plato felt liirnself impelled to do, the levers and 
screws, and all other conceivable machines of dialectic reasoning, 
if peradventure he might thereby succeed in wrenching from Na- 


OBSERVATIONS ON HIS CHARACTER. 


309 


ture a secret, which she had locked up so securely, but which he 

felt to be of such paramount interest.Perhaps he may be 

described as the Platonic Socrates without his truly Hellenic 
faculty and passion for mere logical disquisition.” 

Allied to this tendency to indulge in musings and questionings 
on the state after death, was Mr. Foster’s disposition to listen to 
accounts of supernatural appearances; in which his belief was 
very decided. Not that he received them without a cautious and 
minute examination of the evidence in their favor; but there was 
manifestly an earnest longing, not unmixed with hope, that a ray 
of light might, from this quarter, gleam across the “ shaded fron¬ 
tier.” The belief in the heightened and conscious existence of 
the soul in an intermediate state, he held with great firmness, and 
would have thought it an unfavorable indication in any one to 
maintain the contrary opinion. 

In reference to his general habits in social and domestic life, it 
has been most justly said, “ There it is that moral worth is seen; 
and there it shone forth in this tender beloved parent; this kind- 
hearted master; this disinterested adviser; this cordial friend ; 
this generous benefactor; this man of warm heart and kindly 
feelings, whatever his exterior may have indicated ; of condescen¬ 
sion to his inferiors; of simple honesty in his purposes ; and of 
straightforwardness in his movements ; this great man, with many 
peculiarities, but no littlenesses, who beheld all the airs of assumed 
greatness with utter scorn ; this man of genuine refinement of 
mind, his whole conduct manifesting a delicate regard for the 
feelings of others, and that spirit of accommodation which made 
him willingly sacrifice, and even resolutely abstain from, comforts 
which he could not enjoy without occasioning some trouble to those 
who surrounded him, especially if they were beneath him in sta¬ 
tion—carrying this sensitive, scrupulous regard for others, and 
disregard of himself, to an extent which was painful to those who 
loved him. 

“. . . . His disposition was unresentful. He felt warmly, 
and even indignantly, when taking the part which he deemed in¬ 
cumbent upon him in a righteous cause—in defending the injured ; 
in resisting what he deemed unjust, and exposing what to his eye 
was dishonorable ;—but he thus felt and acted for others. In 
what had relation simply to himself, he felt it beneath him to 
cherish an unforgiving, revengeful temper. He excited strong 
attachment, but he encountered little personal enmity, for it was 



310 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER, 


not his habit to indulge it himself. At the same time, he was 
ready to act as a mediator, and was glad to heal differences— 
taking, sometimes, an active part in this exercise of Christian 
charity. Those who were young felt his condescending atten¬ 
tions. At the annual examinations in the Baptist College, his 
candor was always discernible, not less than the deep interest and 
fixed attention manifest in his manner. His sincere regard for 
the welfare of the young men, and his sympathy towards them, 
have left a lasting impression on the minds of many. 

“ . . . . There was an appearance of misanthropy in the tone 
in which he would sometimes speak of men in general, and of the 
state of the world. But it was an appearance only. He saw the 
debasement of human nature, and deeply deplored it; and if his 
views of mankind were gloomy—formed as they were under the 
guidance of divine truth, and with the discernment of a keen ob¬ 
server—yet they were those of a compassionate spirit. . . . 

“ Such was he to his fellow-men. Before God, he deeply 
abased himself. He saw ‘ Him who is invisibleand in such a 
mind as his, the contrast of infinite grandeur and excellence with 
mere nothingness and pollution, would present itself in a vivid 
light to his intellectual vision. But with him, this humbling view 
of himself became a deeply penetrating emotion ; and it seemed to 
him not less preposterous than impious to assume any other pos¬ 
ture than that of deep abasement before Him, “ whom the heaven 
of heavens cannot contain;’ and, ‘in whose sight the heavens are 
not clean.’ ”* 

Those who enjoyed frequent opportunities of intercourse with 
Mr. Foster could not avoid being impressed by the extraordinary 
unworldliness which pervaded his character, and imparted to it an 
indescribable dignity; nor can the readers of these volumes have 
failed to notice how early he habituated himself to those views of 
human life which formed and cherished this noble peculiarity. 
The direct influence of Christianity in producing such a state of 
mind is so forcibly described in a passage of his Essays, that its 
quotation may be allowed as a suitable conclusion to the present 
biography. 

“It is a proninent characteristic of the Christian revelation that having 
declared this life to be but the introduction to another, it systematically 

* On seeing ifm ivho is Invisible ; a Sermon occasioned by the death of 
the Rev. John Foster, preached at Broadmead, Bristol, Oct. 22, 1843, by 
Thos. S. Crisp, pp. 27-31. 


OBSERVATIONS ON HIS CHARACTER. 


311 


preserves the recollection of this great truth through every representation 
of every subject; so that the reader is not allowed to contemplate any of 
the interests of life in a view which detaches them from the grand object 
and conditions of life itself. An apostle could not address his friends on 
the most common concerns for the length of a page, without the final 
references. He is like a person whose eye, while he is conversing with 
you about an object, or a succession of objects immediately near, should 
glance every moment toward some great spectacle appearing on the dis¬ 
tant horizon. He seems to talk to his friends in somewhat of that man¬ 
ner of expression with which you can imagine that Elijah spoke, if he 
remarked to his companion any circumstance in the journey from Bethel 
to Jericho, and from Jericho to the Jordan; a manner betraying the sub¬ 
lime anticipation which was pressing on his thoughts. The correct con¬ 
sequence of conversing with our Lord and his apostles would he, that the 
thought of IMMORTALITY should hccome almost as habitually present and 
familiarized to the mind as the countenance of a domestic friend; that it 
should he the grand test of the value of all pursuits, friendships, and specu¬ 
lations; and that it should mingle a certain nobleness with everything 
which it permitted to occupy our time.’'’'* 

* On the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion. Letter viii. 




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JNOTICES OF MR. FOSTER, 


AS A 

PREACHER AND A COMPANION 


IN 

A LETTER 


EDITOR OF HIS LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


BY JOHN SHEPPARD, ESQ., 

Jiuihor of “ Thoughts on Private Devotion," c^c., See. 




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NOTICES, ETC. 


315 


NOTICES, ETC. 


My dear Sir,—I n attempting compliance with a request from 
the family of our departed instructor and friend, I choose the 
form of a letter to you; both as giving occasion for the cordial 
expression of my esteem, and best suited to the mere sketches or 
glimpses which I have to offer ; since any strictness in style or 
unity of method would be scarcely in accordance with materials 
so very slight and incomplete. 

A glance at two or three pages in the manuscript of those de¬ 
tached thoughts which form an unexpected addition to the literary 
relics of our lamented friend, and previous acquaintance with a 
few only of the letters probably to appear in your collection, have 
shown me that the revered writer is in them his own best bio- 
grapher. Such indeed—where Christian sincerity of character 
exists—must be the case always, as to real development of mind 
and feelings: the more so likewise, in proportion as the traits of 
these have been deep, refined, and, in a great measure, latent. 

I am conscious, therefore, that this attempt might very well be 
spared : for even if it be found to delineate some features of our 
friend’s character not untruly, his own pen will have given us 
these, undesignedly, with touches far more correct and vivid. 

This remark does not apply either to your consecutive detail 
of the facts of his life, or to the reflections which will be sug¬ 
gested to you by a careful examination of his manuscripts and 
correspondence. All that I can hope to present, in addition to 
these, is a scanty remainder of impressions made on myself, 
chiefly at a period very long gone by, from the intercourse, 
teachings, and ministrations, of a highly esteemed ” pastor 
Even in these, however strong at the time, there must be a dim¬ 
ness which I regret, from the lapse of years, and a memory not 
retentive. 

Yet I feel that since our friend’s decease, the reperusal of 



316 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


parts of his correspondence, converse with those who shared his 
society, and recurrence to his published writings, have all con¬ 
duced, like the naeans sometimes employed for freshening and 
reviving old pictures, to bring out those clouded and fading im¬ 
pressions somewhat more clearly. 

I look back forty years, and in seriously doing this perceive 
that our “ tale ” of those days, and of the long subsequent inter¬ 
val, however swiftly reviewed in mere outline, can never be 
really “_told,” except in the awfully revealing and judicial day 
light that draws near. It is (within a few months) exactly forty 
years ago,* that I first saw our departed friend, arriving as a 
guest to my valued uncle, and at table with my still nearer rela¬ 
tive, long since vanished also. That I'etrospect affectingly veri¬ 
fies and illustrates what I find noted by me from a discourse of 
his in 1805, on Ezekiel vii., 10,—“ The time will arrive for each 
to say. Behold the day is come to sink from health and enjoyment 
into suffering; behold the morning is come which deprives me 
of that friend who was, as it were, the morning light to me.” 
Being then only eighteen years old, and, while fond of books, 
very little acquainted with lettered or highly intellectual society, 
I was of course much impressed and deeply interested, even after 
high expectations raised, by the acute sense, prompt imagination, 
extensive reading, and various talent of our visitor. 

On the then recent resignation of their pastor, correspondence 
had been held between my nearest connexions and tlie late vene¬ 
rable Robert Hall ; a letter from whom (Dec. 26, 1803) names 
“ Mr. Foster, of Downend, near Bristol,” as a young man of 
the most original and extraordinary genius, of unexceptionable 
character, of most amiable temper,” and suggests “ that as he is 
probably at liberty, it may be thought fit to apply to him.” 

Our much esteemed friend (my own kind counsellor through 
many subsequent years), the late Mr. William Tompkins, of 
Abingdon, who had known Mr. Foster at Downend, wrote, “ His 
conduct has been, I believe, not only irreproachable, but every 
way consistent with his profession ; his situation far from a lucra- 
tive one, but his mind of that cast that feels no uneasiness on this 
head, if his corporeal wants are barely supplied. Both places 
were well filled when I heard him, and it is said, notwithstand¬ 
ing the extreme sublimity of his ideas, the common people are 
very fond of him. This I account for from the great simplicity 

** From 184“!, when this letter was written. 


NO'nCES, ETC. 


ni7 

(not lo^vness) of his style. I cannot say whether he is likely to 
raise a congregation ; he seems to me a unique in all his exer¬ 
cises, social and public ; and it may be difficult to calculate upon 
the acceptance and usefulness of his labors or otherwise. Much 
must depend upon taste. He has the most fertile mind, accom¬ 
panied, 1 am told, with a very benevolent heart.” 

These communications induced a request on the part of the 
church,* that Mr. Hall would solicit Mr. Foster’s ministerial aid 
at Frome. His reply, after ascertaining Mr. F.’s willingness to 
visit us (Feb., 1804), confirmed the preceding statements as fol¬ 
lows :—“ His manner is not very popular, but his conceptions are 
most extraordinary and original ; his disposition very amiable, 
his piety unquestionable, and his sentiments moderately orthodox 
—about the level of Watts and Doddridge, which, if I am not 
mistaken, are pretty congenial with those of the Frome society. 
He holds the mediation and atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ 
most strenuously, without which an angel from heaven would, in 
my opinion, do no good as a minister. I ardently wish Mr. Fos¬ 
ter may be approved among you, and be the means of bringing 
many sons to glory.” 

Mr. Foster’s visit took place in the same month, and his settle¬ 
ment as pastor shortly followed. During the first weeks of his 
stav he became my good father’s guest, and a pleasing reference 
to our dwelling, in which he then sojourned, occurs in a letter of 
his to my dear mother. 

Through those weeks, while the forthcoming essayist enlivened 
the social hours of our family, his retired hours were occupied 
by that work which soon after procured him so high and wide 
estimation. It was, however, as far as I remember, little, if at 
all, spoken of; as, indeed, from those characteristics of the wri¬ 
ter to which I shall ere long advert, it was very unlikely to be. 

Our friend’s conversation thus freely and advantageously en¬ 
joyed, together with his public ministry, opened, as it were, to 
my inexperience and curiosity, a new intellectual region. Yet 
the impression of his talents was less forcible than that combined 
with it of his “ kindness ” and “ humbleness of mind.” Nor did 
this arise primarily from his more general demeanor, which 
could as yet be little observed, but from a home instance suited 
both to affect and admonish me. My beloved mother, with no 
deficiency of good sense or taste, had a mind susceptible of quick 

* Worshipping in Sheppard’s Barton Meeting-house, Frome, 


318 


LIFE QF JOHN FOSTER. 


and tender emotion, and often too much swayed by anxious fears. 
Being more provided with ideas than with courage or command 
of words fluently and aptly to, express them, a sort of hesitancy 
and conscious imperfection very often appeared in her conversa¬ 
tion. Perceiving, doubtless, the good influence, both spiritual 
and intellectual, which her guest might exercise on those most 
dear to herself, it was natural that he should receive a somewhat 
peculiar share of her hospitable attention. Yet it was not this, I 
am persuaded, which so much induced especial kindness on his 
part, as the observation of our dear parent’s humble piety, sympa¬ 
thy, simplicity of heart. The way in which this powerful thinker 
and speaker evinced towards her his marked esteem, was by the 
utmost patience and courtesy, never treating her hesitation or 
confused manner with haste, but actually himself often giving 
completeness in his replies to what might be somewhat brokenly 
expressed; so that we were used to say in the domestic party, 
Mr. Foster not only listens kindly to our mother, but is at pains 
to perfect and illustrate her part in the dialogue. 

I was at this time (as indeed ever after while the privilege was 
granted) an earnest hearer of our new pastor’s public addresses. 
Indeed, it is right to state here, as I have to himself in correspon¬ 
dence, that so far as public discourses were made instrumental to 
implant in me a deep regard for Christian truth, it is to those of 
Foster I was most consciously indebted. It was not usual with 
me to attempt taking full notes of his discourses. They ever 
abounded in thoughts which excite thought, and the effort of con¬ 
tinuous writing would have diminished, if not marred, the plea¬ 
sure and profit of mentally revolving what was uttered. 

Perhaps if the discriminating hearers of eminent speakers from 
the pulpit were to note down only those brief passages which they 
felt to be most impressive and useful (and this with the greatest 
possible exactness), a sort of memorabilia might be preserved, 
more valuable than some outlines, or even transcripts of the 
whole. I regret that my own notes and recollections from our 
friend’s discourses do not possess sufficient accuracy to warrant 
me in presenting any of them as his. 

The sermons of Foster were of a cast quite distinct from what 
is commonly called oratory, and, indeed, from what many seem 
to account the highest style of eloquence, namely, a flow of fa¬ 
cile thoughts through the smooth channels of uniformly elevated 
polished diction, graced by the utmost appliances of voice and 
gesture. 


NOTICES, ETC. 


319 


But they possessed for me, and for not a few hearers, qualities 
and attractions much preferable to these. The basis of important 
thoughts was as much original or underived from other minds, as, 
perhaps, that of any reading man’s reflections in our age of books 
could be; still more so the mode and aspect in which they were 
presented. That unambitious and homely sort of loftiness, which 
displayed neither phrase nor speaker, but things,—while the brief 
word and simple tone brought out the sublime conception “ in its 
clearness that fund of varied associations and images by which 
he really illustrated, not painted or gilded his truths; the graphic 
master-strokes, the frequent hints of profound suggestion for after¬ 
meditation, the cogent though calm expostulations and appeals, the 
shrewd turns of half-latent irony against irreligion and folly, in 
which, without any descent from seriousness and even solemnity, 
the speaker moved a smile by his unconscious approaches to the 
edge of wit, yet effectually quelled it by the unbroken gravity of 
his tone and purpose,—all these characteristics had for me an at¬ 
tractive power and value, both by novelty and instructiveness, far 
above the qualities of an oratory or eloquence more fashioned on 
received rules and models. I should scarcely be ready to except 
in this comparison, as it regarded my personal admiration and 
improvement, even the rapid and fervent, yet finished elocution 
of Hall; though this as being more popular, while also more 
critically perfect, was I suppose more generally effective. 

How highly it was estimated by our departed friend appears 
from his published “ Observations on Mr. Hall’s Character as a 
Preacher,”* and how entirely he disclaimed competition with him 
in that department, may seem implied in his having declined to 
continue the week-day lectures, which he had been accustomed 
for a time to deliver at Broadmead meeting-house, after Mr. Hall 
succeeded to the pastoral office there. 

That these lectures must have been admirably adapted to in¬ 
terest and edify a .select auditory, will be very apparent to the 
readers of a part of the series, which has been published since 
his decease; and when the warm admirers of his writings have 
sometimes expressed censure as well as regret, that he did not 
give more of his thoughts to the press, I think it has not been 
sufficiently considered how much mental labor was involved in 
these a^ other of his preparations for the pulpit. Mr. Foster 

* In Robert Hall’s Works; edited by Dr. Gregory. Vol. vi., pp. 
143—148 


320 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


could do nothing slightly, or without that strenuous application of 
thought by which, it is too probable, his bodily health was gradual¬ 
ly enfeebled. 

On the subject of his declining the Broadmead Lectures, I once 
heard him say, in his facetious mood, “Now Jupiter is come I 
can try it no more.” No doubt the supremacy of Jupiter ac¬ 
corded best in his mind with the claims of Hall; and probably 
the different allotment of titles made at Lystra did not occur to 
him. 

A comparison, which I confess may appear too far-fetched, has 
often presented itself to my mind, as picturing the differences 
between the respective style and manner of these remarkable 
preachers. On the noble modern road over the Alps, formed by 
the engineers of Napoleon, one gains here and there a view of 
that mountain track by which the passage had been made before. 
In moving quickly up the long traverses and sweeping curves of 
the new ascent, you trace on some opposite height the short an¬ 
gular zigzags of the path that preceded it. One might compare 
the eloquence of Hall to this great work; carrying you with ease 
to the loftiest elevations, winding with a graceful and simple, 
though elaborate course, amidst varied sublimities, gliding smooth¬ 
ly beside snowy summits where angels would seem to tread, and 
over gulfs where the voice of the wind or torrent might bring to 
mind the lamentings of the lost. On the other hand, the eloquence 
of our more recently departed friend has reminded me of that 
former mountain road, with its sudden turns of discovery and 
surprise ; bringing us now to the brink of an awful perpendicular, 
then startling us by the quick descent to a goatherd's quaint dwell¬ 
ing in the glen; advancing along the giddy ledges of a cliff, and 
then, by a sharp turn, placing us close to some household scene 
in its recesses. Here, if there were less comprehensive or facile 
views of the sublime, one had nearer and more astounding glimpses 
of the inaccessible. 

The path came more within the echo of avalanches ; and while 
It oftener passed the chalet and the herd,^ it sometimes crossed the 
very inlet to dark untrodden chasms, “ which no fowl knoweth.” 
In that original and singular course, the guide, the mule, the litter, 
were forgotten; nothing was thought of but the grandeur of the 
mountains and the floods. If the one might be styled a road truly 
imperial, the other was a path worthy at once of the simplicity 
of Oberlin and the daring of Alpine barons. The imperial road 


NOTICES, ETC. 


321 


deserved and had the just admiration of the great and the many. 
I exceedingly admired it also; but (peril and toil being in the 
ideal journey excluded) I would have preferred for myself, at 
least at times, the original path. 

In this attempt to depict figuratively the style of Mr. Foster’s 
preaching, my reference is not at all to his elaborately prepared 
sermons or lectures, but to those which had for me a still greater 
charm, in which he expatiated freely in every mode of thought 
and illustration, with little, if any, verbal pre-composition. None 
but those who have heard such unfettered and powerful excursions 
of his mind, can fully judge how far the figures may somewhat 
help to characterize them. 

The mention of the imperial road has called to my recollection 
a saying of our friend, when once conversing w'ith me about 
Coleridge and Hall. Some comparison being made, chiefly as to 
their conversational powers, he said, “ Hall commands words like 
an emperor ; Coleridge like a magician.” That 'saying would, 
I think, be still correct, with his own name in place of the latter. 
The magic of Coleridge, whose extraordinary powers our friend 
fully recognized, was probably indeed more splendid and imposing 
than his own. It was much the habit of that man of genius, if I 
may judge by the report of others, to invest himself with brilliant 
. clouds ; passing sometimes the bounds of the intelligible for his 
hearers, if not for himself; and even occasionally (as some uni¬ 
versity professor said of him) “ discoursing most eloquent non¬ 
sense which, amidst its obscurities, had a sort of magical pres¬ 
tige. If Foster could have so discoursed—which may be easily 
believed—it cannot be doubted that he would not ; deterred at 
once by a sense of Christian duty, and by a manly unaffected 
taste. His genius restrained itself from wandering beyond the 
daylight of clear sense, amid the shining mists of what his own 
phrase may designate, as “subtlety attenuated into inanity;”* 
and this I imagine no wise companion would regret. But, as it 
was, we had sometimes magic enough from his lips,—if that may 
be termed intellectual magic, which summons, as from all points 
of the compass, the most sudden and happy combinations and il¬ 
luminations of thought. Images arose on all sides at the master’s 
bidding, nor did he hesitate to call them from the loftiest region 
or the lowest. 

Though I do not distinctly remember to have heard him express 

* Essays, p. 41. Edit. xvii. 

22 


VOL. II. 


322 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


that high admiration of the “ Night Thoughts ” which has been 
mentioned by my respected friend, Mr. Crisp,* it has always 
struck me, that had Mr. Foster’s early taste led him to metrical 
composition, he would have produced poetry resembling that of 
Young, at once in its high range of solemn devotion, its poignant 
satire, and its multiform gathering and assemblage of unexpected 
images. That was in a measure true of himself, which I heard 
him say when highly extolling the imaginative powers of Bishop 
Taylor, “ Jeremy took his figures from all quarters, alike from 
paradise and the kennel.” Yet this should be guarded by re¬ 
marking, that in the most familiar figures and phrases of our 
friend, as an author and preacher, there was nothing coarse or 
unseemly; which I would that we could predicate of all gifted 
speakers from pulpit or platform. 

It may be instructive to notice, how difierently Mr. Postern's 
public discourses were estimated, by different persons of the un- 
lettered class. We say not the poor, for it is a question of stores 
or resources not in the purse but in the mind ; and even our age 
finds, and will leave, some more “ unlearned ” among the rich, 
than some of the many who subsist by daily toil. But those, even 
of the more illiterate, whose minds were awake, reflective or ima¬ 
ginative, though with little or no culture, often heard him with 
delight; while others who (like some of their superiors in station) 
could receive quite contentedly “ the thousandth common-place,” 
or would judge the current stamp of gifts and orthodoxy missing, 
where the style quitted the long-accustomed road of their former 
teachers, were found in some instances to dislike, and almost to 
despise, his ministry. 

Two aged women, of a village where he preached gratuitously, 
are said to have given those contrasted judgments of his sermons ; 
the one setting him down for “ a perfect fool,” the other “ longing 
to hear, that good man all the winter;” useful hints to be revolved 
by public teachers. They show how very diversely, in all classes 
of society, individual minds are constituted ; and while they should 
no doubt impress the duty and importance of aiming at a true sim¬ 
plicity, they will also bring us (if it were only from the uncer¬ 
tainty and contrariety of effects produced) to the great ultimate 
consideration, that the Supreme Instructor can alone make any 
words of man essentially beneficial. 

* In his Sermon, occasioned by the death of the Rev. John Foster. 


NOTICES, ETC. 


323 


The chief requisite, however, for well understanding and 
riglitly valuing our revered friend’s usual discourses, was not 
learning but thoughtfulness :—some capacity and habit in the 
hearei's of thinking for themselves. He rarely, if ever, brought in 
(how much less affected) “ sesquipedalian ” words, “ dark say¬ 
ings,” or hard sentences,” except by the necessity of the case. 
In writings for the press, he wholly discouraged “ mock elo¬ 
quence.”* Of this I can give an instance personal to myself, 
when, having submitted a short paper to his criticism, I found the 
word “ harmless” set over my own “ innocuous,” by the friendly 
pencil. This preference of “ the plainest words that could fully 
express the sense,” was both advocated and generally adhered to 
in liis own works. He was sometimes severe, at least so it struck 
me once as the corrected party, against any sort of hyperbole in 
grave public addresses; for in hearing me make in a discourse 
an imaginative supposition (which I have still sometimes thought 
was not very indefensible), he took occasion to offer a most friendly 
stricture, on what appeared to his critical and accurate judgment, 
its “ excess,” 

But, indeed, if our friend eschewed botli pomp and obscurity in 
published compositions,—where time and helps may be had by 
most readers to “ do” all “ into English ” for themselves, if they 
think the task will repay them,—how much more in preaching, 
where the hearers are extempore ” by necessity, whatever the 
speaker be. Nay, I venture to think he would have agreed with 
me, that there is no assembly, not excepting even the highest in 
our land, in which the needless use of exotic words and abstruse 
thoughts would not, to a great part at least of their members, 
render any address less effective. If this be true universally, who 
will question the more especial fitness of Dr. Campbell’s rule, as 
to preaching, “that whatever is advanced'shall be within the 
reach of every class of hearers, in that which is of all audiences 
the most promiscuous V’’f For all ordinary occasions, doubtless 
that rule is excellent: yet it must be construed as intending the 
generality of every class: since to bring down all public religious 
instruction to the reach of the weakest individuals, would be to 
wrong and defraud the large majority. 

I would add what I think our experiende will frequently verify, 

* See the forcible remarks on this in his essay “ On the Aversion of Men 
of Taste,” &c —Essays, Edit, xvii., p. 251. 

f Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 105 


324 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


that, even for cultivated persons, words of home growth have often 
a forcibleness in bringing thoughts and feelings into contact with 
the mind, which no other words possess. Hence I conceive that 
languages whose compound words are wholly constructed from 
their home resources, must be much the more clear and impres¬ 
sive to “ promiscuous audiences thus, Greek to the Greeks, and 
German to the Germans. Sir James Macintosh writes, “ In all 
cases where we have preserved a whole family of words, the su¬ 
perior significancy of a Saxon over a Latin term is most remarka¬ 
ble. ‘ Well-being arises from well-doing,’ is a Saxon phrase 
which may be thus rendered into the Latin part of the language, 

‘ Felicity attends virtue but how inferior in force is the latter ! 
In the Saxon phrase, the parts or roots of words being significant 
in our language, and familiar to our eyes and ears, throw their 
whole meaning into the compounds and derivations, while the 
Latin words of the same import, having their roots and elements 
in a foreign language, carry only a cold and conventional signifi¬ 
cation to an English ear.”* This well deserves practical atten¬ 
tion. At the same time it is very evident, that a multitude of our 
words of foreign origin have no proper equivalents; and that if a 
writer or speaker of English should try habitually to exclude 
them, it would be an impracticable endeavor to unmake the lan¬ 
guage. In the utterance also of what has not been pre-composed 
in writing, it will occasionally happen, although the wish and 
aim be to introduce as few difficult words as possible, that such 
first present themselves to the speaker’s mind, and must be at 
once employed ; because the plainer substitute—except recollec¬ 
tion were far more prompt than usual—is not ready at our imme¬ 
diate need. If this sometimes happened in the discourses of Fos¬ 
ter,—or when, from their superior appositeness and nicety of 
adaptation, he was induced to choose uncommon words, or when 
the nature of his subject drew him into recondite thoughts,—he 
was at pains to throw light on each for the uninstructed class of 
hearers, by subjoining some easier circuit of phrase for the one, 
and opening some simpler access to the other. It should also be 
observed, that, if there were passages in his sermons where the 
literary style prevailed, these were intermixed with others of a 
different cast, and with modes of expression and appeal the most 
plain, pointed, and colloquial. In all this I am persuaded he de¬ 
served sedulous imitation by Christian teachers. 


History of England, vol. i.,p. 92. 


NOTICES, ETC. 


32.'i 


The fault, in a critical point of view, of this eminent thinker’s 
ordinary discourses (Jj' that were a fault in his case whicii in 
general one must account so), was their being sometimes, at least 
in tlie earlier periods of his ministry, not symmetrical^ not care¬ 
fully proportioned in their several parts. This remark, however, 
should be very much restricted to those earlier periods ; or to his 
addresses on occasions and before audiences where he felt tlie 
greatest freedom. It does not apply to the lectures published 
since his decease ; which, inasmuch as they evidently (from the 
unfinislied hints introduced for oral enlargement) were not pre¬ 
pared for the press, surprise me by their accurate composition 
both as to plan and style. But, on occasions such .as are now re¬ 
ferred to, his mind, prolific of thoughts, endued with unceasing 
copiousness of associations, imaginative, historic, moral, spiritual, 
with every subject and object, sometimes lingered on indirect or 
preliminary views, stealing from itself the time for full and inti¬ 
mate discussion of the chief and direct matter. Yet I doubt whe¬ 
ther any unprejudiced hearer can have wished this habit or 
license restrained by the excursive speaker, while it continually 
opened his way to trains of thought the most solemn, important, 
and exalted. 

Even those who (I fear with some prejudice and captiousness) 
offered strictures on our eloquent friend’s departures from more 
ordinary methods, yet carried home, it may be judged, a stronger 
impression than they might have done from many a discourse 
framed more carefully by rules of proportion and completeness. 
I have heard of a country hearer’s relating with something like 
critical scorn, how Mr. Foster began his sermon by telling the 
village congregation of his having waited in a shower (while on 
his way to preach to them) beneath a great oak tree ; and of 
what thoughts had then occupied him as to the things which had 
heretofore taken place there,—changes in the world while that 
tree had been growing,—idol worship which might have been 
performed under a yet more ancient tree near the same spot but 
since fallen, of which that was then perhaps an acorn,—strokes 
of death on young and old, on the lords of the soil and the tillers 
of it, since that tree budded as a sapling,—all or most of which 
thinss, the rural critic averred, were as well known to the hearers 
as to the speaker. 

But the critic’s hearer answered, “Even this introductory part 
of the sermon, which you set light by, seems nevertheless to have 
fixed your attention very deeply, since you report it so fully.” 


326 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


I revert from these observations, which have been chiefly on 
our friend’s public discourses, to some further slight notices of his 
private intercourse. Let me first venture to refer to one or two 
tendencies in conversational habits, which, as I have sometimes 
felt in his society, there might be occasion to regret; deeming it 
right to mention these, in order that my sketches, though so ex¬ 
ceedingly imperfect, may not be consciously unfaithful. Some 
thoughtful Christians who had the privilege of occasionally asso¬ 
ciating with Mr. Foster, did regret that he passed not more 
habitually and extensively from the sphere of things secular into 
that of things ultra-mundane and unseen, where he could at once 
please, surprise, and edify us by lifting each hearer, boldly and 
felicitously, above his own unaided reach of thought. When he 
did so ascend, this was the sure result. We are certain also 
that from his unfeigned devotement to the cause and hopes of re¬ 
ligion, and his lofty, solemn views of the Deity, the universe, and 
all spiritual existence, such topics must have been highly con¬ 
genial to his mind. I doubt not that both myself and others, who 
have regretted that they did not occupy a more large and con¬ 
stant share of our intercourse, were each in part responsible for 
not having elicited as fully as we might and ought to have done, 
the sacred eloquence of one from whom we should have derived 
so much to exalt and animate the Christian spirit. 

In seeking to account for the habits and tendencies of such a 
man, one feels that the originality and depth of his character 
(and, I may add, his reserve on matters personal) must render 
the study very dubious and the guesses probably often wrong. 
Here accordingly would have been the special occasion for that 
auto-biography (“ a man’s writing memoirs of himself”) which 
is, as we before remarked, the only profound and sufficient bio¬ 
graphy in any case ; though even there the depth and sufficiency 
can be expected only from a truly introspective as well as Chris¬ 
tian mind. The nearest approach to this, supposing intimate 
connexions and domestic friends to be any way adequately quali¬ 
fied, would be by them and by them only. Letters, howeyer, 
are often of the very nature of auto-biography ; as will be doubt¬ 
less found in many passages of the preceding correspondence. 

But to search into our friend’s internal self, and the actings 
of his intellect and will, was like an attempt (so at least I felt) 
to explore a cave full of recesses, which you could not enter. 


NOTICES, ETC. 


327 


A rapid sparkling stream, not without “ gold dust,”* flowed from 
it ; but its windings and the well-head were far out of ken. His 
real habits of thought, feeling, and action, remained in some points 
more than usually hidden, and occasionally enigmatic, even to 
those who studied him most. And the more, on account of a cer¬ 
tain reserve, excellent in its motives and spirit, already glanced 
at and to which I shall advert again. My own idea, however, 
of the chief key to some of his characteristics, is this. Mr. 
Foster had a keen, deep feeling, at once mournful and indignant, 
of “ the evil that is in the world especially in its varied forms 
of base selfishness—fraud, injustice, oppression ;—and above all 
of the aggravation which these sins must have, from the greater 
gifts and trusts of the delinquents, when practised by the prosper¬ 
ous, instructed, and ruling classes. He had a strong and earnest 
conviction, that these evils ought to be boldly and persistively 
exposed, denounced, and warred against. There were also pro¬ 
bably, combining with this, the lessons of his own experience 
how soon and often higli theological questions, and moral or phi¬ 
losophical speculations closely connected with these, lead into 
thickets where we gather no fruits, but rather wound and entan¬ 
gle each other and ourselves with the brambles of those cold and 
twilight wildernesses. 

He disliked, moreover, as I conjecture, both the seeming affec¬ 
tation or prejudicial narrowness of dwelling mainly on simple 
and experimental religious topics, and the apparent pride of 
always mounting to tlie ideal and remote. But still more than 
this I think it was the prevalent bias of his mind, to reckon on 
the greater likelihood of effecting good in conversation by what 
came home to men’s daily life and business, and by discussing 
the great social interests of mankind. Thus he felt it a duty to 
return to the view of “ our bad world,” as he sometimes called 
it, and oftenest perhaps to matters of a civil or ecclesiastical, or 
national and international character. To protest against great 
evils in high places, to expose political abuses and oppressions, to 
censure the vices of men of the world, or the inconsistencies of 
professed Christians, he accounted the most probable means of 
really influencing the state of society, and, while courageously 
bearing a part in the contest against palpable ills, ultimately pro¬ 
moting good of the very highest kind. Doubtless his writings, 
particularly the “ Essay on Popular Ignorance,”—which Mac- 

* A figure used in his Lectures. 


328 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


intosh is said to have pronounced one of the most able and origi¬ 
nal works of the age,—must have had great silent influence 
towards the political and educational changes that have marked 
our times. But I am of opinion, that in conversation, where all 
is usually less measured, and in some parts of his epistolary cor¬ 
respondence, if our revered friend had expatiated more on themes 
above the range of party feeling, there might have been in these 
departments more progress towards his whole object—that of op¬ 
posing evil and advancing good. His mind, so commanding, so 
full of resource, so essentially benevolent, might thus, it appears 
to me, without compromise of conscientious opinions, have en¬ 
larged its scope and opportunity of social usefulness. At the 
same time I utterly reject all such explanations of his conduct in 
these points as party spirit and detraction would gladly devise, 
and vulgar or malignant minds might readily adopt. 

Mr. Foster’s deep aversion to whatever was meanly or unfeel¬ 
ingly selfish, sometimes prompted him to express his scorn or 
condemnation by keen satire or by stern reproof. In a letter to 
me, he thus forcibly describes the lot of a worthy dependent under 
a narrow-minded and exacting employer.—“ I saw him sinking 
almost to the dust, in the hard service of that most mean and 

selfish mortal, the late-. He was longing to escape from a 

slavery poorly paid, and under which his health was evidently 
perishing. The good man has escaped from all the long griev¬ 
ances of a very suffering life, and I have suffered no loss by the 
attempt to save him.” 

One sort of instance which specially awakened in him such 
feelings, was that sophistry of low ambition which induced dere¬ 
liction of principles for advancement’s sake, b-y men of genius and 
talent. Contempt of this appeared to impel him the farther and 
more decidedly in an opposite direction. 

Perhaps also his mental constitution fitted him rather for the 
office of a censor, than for milder habits of intercourse with those 
from whom he strongly differed. He felt, I doubt not, that “ the 
fear of man ” (to which he was as superior as most) still “ bringeth 
a snare and his spirit resembled that of aneient prophets in an 
unshrinking maintenance of what he held to be truth. 

Not that our friend could be harsh or uncourteous to those 
whom he deemed really good men ; though he might be at first 
somewhat slow to believe them such, when their party and 
opinions were very unlike his own. But, once persuaded pf this, 



NOTICES, ETC. 


829 


he became affable, candid, and considerate of their position : and 
the tribute of his esteem must in some cases have been felt to be 
the more unquestionable and valuable, because whenever it was 
given to persons in high office or station, or to possessors of wealth, 
it was certainly not for, but notwithstanding, these circumstances ; 
which had, in his mind, no conciliating influence. 

That may be truly said of Mr. Foster generally, which I have 
instanced in his deportment to my beloved mother ; no man of 
equal powers was perhaps ever found so free from pride, assump¬ 
tion, or impatience, towards those whom he judged sincere 
Christians; so much a pattern of leniency, gentleness, and 
cordiality, towards the “ least,” when he thought them governed 
by right and pious principles. He was never harsh or distantial 
to the weak and poor. And when towards others he used sarcasm, 
it was distinctly for the cause of religion, justice, wisdom, and 
benevolence, however he might occasionally mistake in estimating 
what he deemed adverse to these. 

A small but characteristic practical specimen of his satiric and 
humane feelings in conjunction, occurred, when, nearly forty 
years ago, I passed a summer evening with him at the house of 
one of my relatives. Some youths were fishing with a net in a 
stream not far off, and it was proposed that we should look at their 
“ sport.” A few little fishes were caught, and thrown upon the 
grass ; when Mr. Foster, without a word, quickly took up each 
and threw all again into the stream: leaving us to construe the 
deed as best we might. Doubtless he was resolved to prolong the 
life and enjoyment which what is called sport had been abridging, 
while he shrewdly marked, by sport inverted, his estimate of that 
which commonly bears the name ; “ sport to the strong ” (as it 
was long since said), “ but death to the feeble.” And truly, not- 
witbstanding the grave patronage for that particular sport, and 
the animating excitement of some others, it would seem passing 
strange, were it not for confirmed habit, to hear of a tribe of 
rationals, one favorite class of whose amusements consisted in 
skilfully destroying life. 

Yet there are far greater cruelties than those of rural sports, 
in the vastly extended and perpetual mal-treatment both of 

creatures dying for the service of man,” and of “ those that 
serve him by their life.” Against these our eloquent friend has 
publicly and indignantly protested. “ An inconceivable daily 
amount of suffering, inflicted on unknown thousands of creatures, 


330 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


dying in slow anguish, when their death might be without pain 
as being instantaneous, is accounted no deformity in our social 
system, no incongruity with the national profession of a religion 
of which the essence is charity and mercy.”* 

Mr. Foster was signally distinguished by that rare negative 
quality, the absence of “ egoism.” Never was this spirit dis¬ 
covered in him in tliose potent and substantial forms of selfish¬ 
ness or self-seeking which the French word here borrowed 
includes. But very observable also was the exclusion of that 
slighter and more petty form of it (too common with those who 
have won a share of public esteem), which we English term 
egotism. Before being conversant with the human mind at large, 
and with the defects of Christians, such a foible could not be ex¬ 
pected to prevail in any discerning and instructed persons. It 
must be daily checked in our age of extended mental culture, 
when some facility in public speaking, and some attainments in 
literature or science, are become so altogether common, and when 
the production of respectable prose or verse in types forms hardly 
a greater distinction than in tlie days of our remote forefathers a 
fair handwriting and fixed orthography were. When we have 
learned something of the distance and multitude of worlds, and 
have also in our hands dictionaries of the great number of the 
literate in our small world, and catalogues of their countless 
works, self-conceit increasingly betrays littleness and folly. 

How much more then should it be repressed by our belief in 
the existence of “ angels” and “ spirits” exalted far above us, and 
of that infinite Intelligence who “ made the stars,” and “ meted 
out the heavens.” 

In real Christians, therefore, egotism might be supposed (before 
experience) to be quite precluded by the continual sense of its 
vast inconsistency. But experience teaches us that “ old Adam” 
is, if one may so express it, at once too strong and too weak for 
such thoughts of wisdom and right-mindedness fully to prevail. 
The fault still too much inheres in man’s contracted and self- 
idolizing mind, even when intellectually and morally enlarged by 
being spiritually renewed. One has heard and read of literary 
and scientific “ men of the world,” whose egotism was even lu¬ 
dicrously conspicuous; and I have known one or two Christians, 
eminent fti their religious and lettered circles, in whom this weak¬ 
ness was too much uncorrected. It is fostered, as life advances, 

* “ Essay on Popular Ignorance.” Edit, ii., p. 147. 


NOTICES, ETC. 


331 


by the curiosity of others as to persons that have attained a cer¬ 
tain note, whose questions often draw them into it unawares. Yet 
in “ the highest style of man” this habit will doubtless be care¬ 
fully controlled. Our friend afforded a remarkable instance of 
the complete avoidance or suppression of it. Like that Newton 
of whose surpassing powers he has expressed such unqualified 
admiration,* he betrayed no self-importance. Of himself, his 
sayings, his writings, his doings, he never willingly talked ; and 
it might be partly from a keen perception of the littleness of ego¬ 
tism in a sage, and its unseemliness in a believer, that he ap¬ 
proached the contrary extreme, and so sparingly disclosed his 
personal feelings. 

A well-known habit of Mr. Foster’s conversation was that 
which is often suggested as profitable, especially in youth—the 
asking of one’s companions, respectively, such information as each 
is best prepared to furnish ; with the threefold aim of gaining 
knowledge, of enabling others to impart it, and of giving them the 
pleasant impression that their company and information have some 
value. 

This practice was carried into his later life. The thirst for 
knowledge, both of men and things, with the temper of courtesy, 
and the absence of vanity, combined in his case to prompt and to 
prolong it. Thus he rather drew forth conversation than dictated 
or ruled it; having, indeed, a general readiness for any sort of 
blameless topic, from the most profound to the most familiar. A 
farm servant or a lover of old folios, a soldier or a weaver, a mis¬ 
sionary or a miner, found him alike inclined (as I recollect by 
sundry instances) to elicit and welcome what each best could tell. 

lie had also the rare excellence of being a patient hearer; 
never showing eagerness to engross attention himself, never antici¬ 
pating or interrupting others, except sometimes to aid them. Few, 
I should think, whose talents (and it may be added whose satiric 
and disputative powers) were so felt and recognized, can have 
caused so little of fear or constraint, even in the young and diffi¬ 
dent, when they were well disposed. The profane and irreligious 
might, indeed, with great reason dread his rebuke; nor were the 
vain and frivolous secure. I have seen a young man in his com¬ 
pany, acute and informed, but piquing himself on the “ exquisite” 
in dress, who seemed instinctively ill at ease lest a shaft should 
fly, which silk and velvet were not proof against. A pedant or 

* Essays, Edit, xvii., p. 216. 


332 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


boaster might have fared worse, and some ladies might be scared 
by the severe student who liad talked of “ ambulating blocks for 
millinery.” But wherever he saw simplicity, sincerity, and mo¬ 
desty, his evident and successful aim was to inspire confidence 
and ease. Christian principle no doubt prompted this; in other 
words true self-knowledge, which is in effect humility. 

It was in the smallest companies that our friend was most social 
and complacent. He had no turn for discoursing to a whole cir¬ 
cle, like those talkers who (as has been said of De Stael) are 
“ admirable in monologue.” His true conversational element and 
place was the fireside of a very few friends, agreeing in the main 
with himself, from whom, however, he claimed no deference, but 
with whom he felt a cordial freedom. That the reception of some 
visitors was quite unwelcome to him, as a heavy tax on time, 
might well be presumed, and is pretty strongly stated in a letter 
to myself, mentioning residence in a city as “ a thing to the last 
degree undesirable. There ,he continues, “ besides many other 
things to be deprecated, the soothsayers predicted there would be 
one other ‘ plague.^ There is an aggravation of this direful pest 

in-from its being a place very much frequented by people 

from a distance, who, ‘ as they happened to he there, would do 
themselves the pleasure of calling on you,’ as Mr. Jay used to 
complain at Bath. These polite personages would have thought 
it wrong—oh, very wrong indeed !—to come to your house to steal 
a silver spoon, or the like, but thought themselves conferring a 
favor by calling on you to rob you of hours of your valuable time ; 
time in which you were, perhaps, severely pressed to accomplish 
some mental task incumbent on you.” 

Indeed, nothing has been more fully announced by him than 
the high value which he attached to every “ talent,” and to time 
especially as the grand requisite and substratum for using and 
improving the rest. Of a sermon from him (1805) on Psalm xc. 
12, I find the following note, “ Those people who are not in the 
habit of estimating a day as a serious portion of time, or feeling 
regret at having trifled it away, but who lose it with apparent un¬ 
concern, will generally be found to be trifling life away on the 
whole account, and adding day to day without improvement.” 
Yet, at least in reference to the conduct and plan of others, he did 
not urge, as to the distribution and expenditure of time, an unqua¬ 
lified strictness. In a letter of 1812 he writes:—“ All this apo¬ 
logy would itself just as much want an apology, if it should seem 
to you (which I earnestly hope it will not) to carry an appearance 



NOTICES, ETC. 


333 


as if my time were put under some extraordinarily rigorous dis¬ 
cipline, and occupied with employments of which an interesting 
discussion with a friend would be an unwelcome interruption. 
Nothing can be further from the truth than this.’' 

A letter of 1820 contains the following passage:—“ In favor 
of a mind too prone to melancholy rnusings, and a kind of pensive 
subsidence, I have no doubt that the most rigid morality and 
religion will give a full sanction to many liberties and expedients 
for exhilaration, especially excursions in quest of the interest and 
instruction afforded by seeing the diversities of nature and man.” 

Mr. Foster was a genuine lover of “ natural scenery,” and his 
admiration dwelt much on its separate features, even more per¬ 
haps than on the varied whole and its combined effect. I have 
known him linger by a huge ancient tree in the park of Longleat, 
still reluctant to quit the spot, and as if half ready to take root 
near its giant trunk. A much valued friend, a lady with whom 
ho visited many beautiful spots in our neighborhood, speaks of the 
difficulty with which he was persuaded to quit the top of “ Al¬ 
fred’s Tower,” at Stourhead, where the panoramic prospect riveted 
him. In the same mood he would gaze untiringly on a waterfall, 
or the rushing of a rapid stream. The habits of his mind exem¬ 
plified the statement of Coleridge concerning “ the great book of 
nature,” that “ it has been the music of gentle and pious minds 
in all ages; it is the poetry of all human nature, to read it in a 
figurative sense, and to find therein correspondencies and symbols 
of the spiritual world.”* 

Eminently was he one of those whom he has himself described 
as finding “ the wide field of nature a scene marked all over with 
mystical figures, the prints and traces, as it were, of the frequenta- 
tion and agency of superior spirits. They find it sometimes con¬ 
centrating their faculties to curious and minute inspection, some¬ 
time dilating them to the expansion of vast and magnificent forms ; 
sometimes beguiling them out of all precise recognition of material 
realities, whether small or great, into visionary rnusings; and 
liabitually and in all ways- conveying into the mind trains and 
masses of ideas of,an order not to be acquired in the schools, and 
exerting a modifying and assimilating influence on the whole 
mental economy.’’f 

* The Statesman’s Manual, Appendix B., p. 267, second edition, reprinted 
with his Essay on the Constitution of the Church and the State, 1839. 

t Vide Eclectic Review, May, 1S14, p. 462; or “ Contributions,” &c., 
Vol. 11., p. 436. 


334 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


This subject, though it seem to have no immediate relation to 
that of our friend’s devotional exercises, will appositely lead us 
to it; for I have been told by valued relatives who, soon after 
a tour in North Wales, happened to come into his company, that 
having asked them many questions about the chief mountains and 
romantic views, he afterwards, in the social prayer of the evening, 
made striking reference to the wisdom and goodness of God in 
providing at once for our instruction and enjoyment in those grand 
and beautiful scenes of which they had conversed. 

His domestic and public prayers (more especially perhaps the 
former) are well known to have been very peculiar. They were 
in some sort meditative, but should rather be designated as mark- 
edly specific; dwelling and dilating on one or a very few points, 
instead of touching more cursorily on many. No doubt the at¬ 
tention of the thoughtful who joined in them was more sure to be 
fixed ; but the less intelligent had, I apprehend, some difficulty 
in fully joining with the eminently thouglitful speaker. This 
was probably greater, for the same hearer, in attending to his 
prayers than to his discourses, because elucidations or illustrations 
of thought could not in the former be added. 

In this respect it appears to me tliat our friend’s prayers were 
not the best adapted for “ the manybut for persons at all akin 
by thoughtfulness to himself, they were most impressive by calm 
solemnity and by true sublimity. They did not betoken over¬ 
flowing or quickly excitable emotions ; but they did indicate such 
as were earnest and profound, tempered in the moulds of unbor¬ 
rowed thought; a cast of feeling often more fixed and practical 
than that which springs from impulses more sudden and more 
ardent. 

Of these remarks, already perhaps too extended, it may be said 
by some,—the nonconformists having few men of note among 
them, are prone, when such arise, to magnify the individual’s 
talents and doings, with a favoritism which betrays either want of 
knowledge or willing forgetfulness as to the many distinguished 
names in larger and more learned communions, where the fre¬ 
quency of great endowments abates the fame of each, and prc- 
eludes the conspicuousness of almost all. 

Without pleading guilty to such a charge, we may yet admit 
that there is some risk of an over-estimation of what is rare, and 
of a certain magniloquence about it : some added danger of 
“ glorying in men,” where, as to genius and acquirements, there 


NOTICES, ETC. 


335 


are comparatively few in whom to glory. It concerns us all, of 
whatever community, to bear in mind that ancient expostulation, 
“ Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein 
is he to be accounted of!” 

The religious body to which Mr. Foster belonged is, in the old 
world, one of the less numerous, and not one of the most lettered. 
It was formerly remarked to me, by an able minister of a larger 
denomination, “ Among you Baptists extremes prevail—one or 
two mountains, and a good many mole-hills—his reference 
being obviously to Hall and Foster. No wonder, then, if we 
should make much of our rare mountains, and confining our view 
for the time to that district in which we stand, should be apt to 
think them unrivalled. 

I hope, however, that nothing has really been here offered in 
the spirit of exaggeration or boasting. A very different lesson is 
assuredly impressed on us by meditating on the successive de¬ 
parture of those who have been lights in the world, and by wit¬ 
nessing the bodily infirmities whicli at length, in the order of God’s 
providence, weigh down the greatest minds. We feel how all 
distinctions fade into comparative unimportance, and almost va¬ 
nish out of thought, before the great fact of death, and the vast 
unveiling of futurity. With a life which is “ even a vapor,” 
and—if aught in the universe be real—with a boundless reality 
so near, what do all advantages or elevations in the one amount 
to, except as affecting the other ? The grave of our distinguished 
friend, or the chair and couch of his last debility and pain, are, 
for each of us, “ posts ” of solemn “ observation,” at which all 
earthly attainments and successes appear,"except in their refer¬ 
ence to what shall be everlasting, alike in littleness; and all the 
varied events of time resemble the brief differences of bygone 
dreams, the untoward, or painful, or attractive. 

When we observe, and perhaps have felt, the eagerness and 
zeal with which so many covet and besiege the honors, prizes, 
and “ great things ” of this world, one might almost think it was 
expected, as one of the victories of modern science, to live here 
always; or at least to have the longevity of patriarchs renewed ; 
while yet disease and death, so continual and imminent about our 
path, evermore rebuke the illusion. 

Mr. Foster had very long suffered from a chronic disorder of 
the bronchial glands, which indeed had obliged him, thirty-seven 
years before, to relinquish, amidst the regrets of his friends and 


336 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


hearers, the pastoral office at Frome, though it was afterwards 
for a time resumed elsewhere. Even in the prime of life he often 
endured much pain and local harm, in the discourses and pro¬ 
longed conversations which edified and delighted many. But in 
latter years he had been forbidden, on account of much more 
threatening symptoms, to speak at all in public. He submitted to 
this affliction, and the consequent disability for one chief kind of 
endeavor to bo useful, I have reason to believe, with uncomplain¬ 
ing patience. When, about five weeks before his removal from 
the world, I visited our suffering friend for the last time, I had 
been apprised of an increase of illness, and difficulty of convers¬ 
ing, which would limit me to a short interview; yet had no ap¬ 
prehension, even after observing his changed appearance, that his 
spirit would so soon be summoned to its better home. He came 
down from his chamber to see me in the customary sitting-room, 
and although his thin and pale looks indicated great debility, con¬ 
versed in his usual manner. I think I noticed to him the blessing 
of having the intellectual powers so entirely unimpaired during 
illness ; to which he answered, “ It is a comfort even to under¬ 
stand what is read and heard.” 

I then referred to the melancholy mental decay of the late, 
distinguished Southey ; on which Mr. Foster remarked, “ No 
doubt his mind was worn out by the toil of building up many 
books; as if there were a want, a famine of books.” “ So it is ” 
(he added with a smile), “ there are men who even apologize for 
their errors and haste, and for not delaying in order to greater 
correctness, as if the world were laboring under a dearth of the 
article.” 1 replied, Consider, dear sir, you are speaking to one 
of the culprits;” to which he rejoined, “ No, hardly that, yet.” 
I said to iiis daughter, who sat by, “ We all wish Mr. Foster had 
been more a culprit.” He then intimated, “ Perhaps we may 
wish this at times, now that nothing more can be done;” adding, 
“ Much has been omitted every way, partly from trifling. One 
feels that in the great concern of religion, much more might have 
been done.” I observed, “ All, however, no doubt, is for the 
best.” To which our friend replied, ‘‘ Yes, in the deep sense, 
These feelings of defect serve to humble us, and to show that in 
ourselves we are nothing.” I said, “ It is happy, sir, that you 
have good daughters near you. Even a son would not be able 
to afford such aid and solace.” He answered, “ Yes, indeed, 
they are very kind.'” The following sentiment was also uttered 


NOTICES, ETC. 


337 


by him with peculiar seriousness: “ How dreary would old age 
and illness be without the great doctrine of the Atonement I” I 
left him, bearing with me a deep impression of that thought; but 
certainly not with the apprehension that in this world we should 
meet no more. It was however so appointed. He and many 
more whom we revered and loved are gone; and though some 
remain whom we dearly prize, what would life itself be without 
hope in “ the glorious gospel,” but an apparition, and departure, 
and oblivion of shadows ? 

With what a tone of utterly cold and thoughtless unconcern do 
we sometimes hear the fact mentioned, even by professed Chris¬ 
tians,—“ lie died “ he is dead.'’ Nay, in how cursory and 
unthinking a manner have we frequently named it ourselves! 
And yet the feeling of awful strangeness, of momentous novelty, 
which at times pervades us, when for an instant, we have had, 
as it were, realizing flashes of that event as indeed at hand, is 
one which all earthly symbols of thought, spoken or written, are 
powerless to arrest, and image, and disclose. The silent, lonely 
transit of a conscious and reflective spirit—a being which is pro¬ 
foundly accountable to its Divine Author—from all connection 
with this bodily life, and with this visible world, into a new mode 
of existence, unknown and unconceived and illimitable, must 
ever be the most mysterious and awfully deciding change on 
which our meditation can be fixed: and the solemnity of it is in¬ 
evitably and justly heightened, in proportion to the greatness of 
the individual spirit’s capacities, and consequent responsibilities. 

How painful therefore the thought, that so many of the most 
powerful and expanded minds have, to all appearance, left this 
earthly state, without seeking a right and availing preparedness 
for the vast hereafter, by faith in the One Sacrifice, and renova¬ 
tion from the Infinite Spirit. Remembering these with sadness 
and awe, we turn for a relieving contrast to the contemplation of 
those instances (with the hope that they may soon be far more 
multiplied) where the special and abounding grace of God has 
consecrated to his own service his highest intellectual gifts. As 
we meditate on these—and indeed on all the servants of God who 
have entered his rest, or will follow thither—the event, still so 
painful and awful in itself, is viewed rather in its peaceful and 
felicitous result; justifying a forcible and singular expression 
which I remember our friend once used to me. He had been 
referring to some gloomy facts and thoughts which cloud and 
VOL. II. 23 


338 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


darken the whole horizon of life ; but then added—“ there is 
however one luminary—it is the visage of Death.” When we 
think how often, in our own age, genius has lamentably misused 
its treasures, by such productions and social communications as are 
remembered in life’s last days with inexpressible sorrow,—it is in¬ 
deed matter for high and solemn thankfulness, to review such a 
course as that of our departed friend ; a course of resolved piety 
and genuine benevolence ; a dedication from early life to the ad- 
vancement of the religion of Christ: to dwell on his memory as 
a devoted servant and worshipper of that supreme Lord who has 
called him from us; one who deeply adored the Infinite Benefac¬ 
tor as revealed through his beloved Son, and really “ endured as 
seeing Him who is invisible.” Few spirits can have passed away 
from earth, endowed with more of intellectual grasp and pene¬ 
tration to meet the wonders and grandeurs of regions immense 
and untraversed :—few also 1 believe with a more profound per¬ 
suasion, that as creatures, however endowed, admired, or digni¬ 
fied, “ in ourselves we are nothing,” but yet that, if true suppli¬ 
cants and recipients of the divine grace, then, “ life and death, 
things present, things to come, are ours :” sinfce “ we are Christ’s, 
and Christ is God’s.” 

You will deeply feel with me, dear sir, how earnest should be 
our wish and prayer, that many more of those whose powers and 
acquirements might render them, in the happiest sense, “ lights 
burning and conspicuous,”* may attain the same faith and de¬ 
votion, the same humility and hope, instead of forgetting God, 
while idolizing the world and themselves. 

Believe me. 

Yours very sincerely, 

J. S. 


* John V. 35. Compare Phil. ii. 15 


ADDRESSED TO MISS SARAH SAUNDERS, 


DURING HER LAST ILLNESS ; 

PRECEDED BY A BRIEF MEMOIR; 


BY 


JOHN FOSTER. 



I 


I) 


i 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


Sarah Saunders (to whom the nine following letters were addressed) 
was the eldest daughter of John Saunders, Esq., solicitor, of Plymouth. 
The opening mind of this singularly-gifted child was distinguished by 
strong reasoning powers, general intellectual pre-eminence, and a pro¬ 
digious memory; together with the habit of exercising, from earliest 
life, an independent judgment on whatever subject happened to engage 
her attention. These striking qualities early attracted the notice of Mr. 
Foster (for at the age of four she removed to Bristol) ; and as he often 
saw, and traced the rapid development of her faculties, so he was de¬ 
lighted, in his condescension, occasionally, as time advanced, to engage 
with her in some argument. On these occasions she maintained her 
opinions, althougii with deference, with great animation, and in the most 
appropriate language ; acknowledging an error alone when her under¬ 
standing was satisfied. Mr. Foster once declared, that he had never met 
with any young person, male or female, comparable to Sarah Saunders, 
for ingenious, varied, and even felicitous conversation. 

The character of her mind may be estimated by one or two anecdotes, 
out of numerous others. However trifling in themselves, they derive a 
reflected value from the subsequent letters, and which letters will be the 
better understood by these slight preliminary remarks. 

Before the age of four years, having failed in some small duty, her 
mother remarked to her, “ Sarah, do you not know that it is said in 
scripture, ‘ Children, obey your parents?’” “ Yes,” she replied, “and 
directly after it takes the part of the poor children, and says, ‘ Fathers, 
provoke not your children to wrath.’ ” 

At the age of five (during a brief residence at Plymouth), a friend lent 
her Pope’s Homer, which she devoured, and became a decided Grecian. 
Soon after its perusal, a lady, with feathers, came into her mother’s 
drawing-room, and approached to kiss the infant in the mother’s arms ; 
when the child turned away, scared with the nodding plumes; on which 
the lady, perceiving the cause of the alarm, placed her bonnet on the 
table, and then came and saluted the child. Little Sarah Saunders 
marked the incident, and then enthusiastically repeated :— 

“ The glittering terrors from his brow unbound, 

And placed the beaming helmet on the ground.” 



342 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


At an age when most others would be considered as in a state of in¬ 
fancy, Mr. Montgomery’s “ World before the Flood,” just then published, 
was lent to her; into which she at once eagerly plunged, and to the 
great credit of the poet, read the whole of it al a sitting. Being asked 
which of the characters she most admired, she at once answered, “ Sa¬ 
tan and for which preference she was prepared to assign her infantine 
reasons! 

Being introduced to Hannah More, young as she was, Mrs. More said, 
knowing her taste for reading, “ My dear little girl, what was the last 
book you read ?” To which Sarah Saunders, with great simplicity, re¬ 
plied, “ A cookery book. Ma’am.” Oh, that’s rightsmiling, answer¬ 
ed the experienced lady, “ The child, thirsting for knowledge, reads in¬ 
discriminately. It is for maturity to select.” 

But now, to pass over much that might be said, to more important 
considerations. When the complaint, of which Sarah Saunders died at 
the age of eighteen (consumption), was beginning to assume a fatal’ 
aspect, a relative suggested to Mr. Foster,—who was regarded by the 
sufferer with the highest veneration,—that a few lines from him in her 
circumstances, might be acceptable and useful. To this he readily as¬ 
sented ; and his first letter was well received, and beneficial in its effects. 
As the disease was rapidly advancing, his sympathy became more ex¬ 
cited, and in extending his communications, each successive letter in¬ 
creased in faithfulness and in intensity of feeling. 

The end of Sarah Saunders was now manifestly approaching, so that 
Mr. Foster was doubtful whether it would be proper to have the last, and 
ninth, letter presented to her, and therefore sent it under cover to her 
uncle, Mr. Joseph Cottle of Bristol, with the following note. 

Stapleton, February 7, 1825. 

“ My dear Sir, — I have again endeavored to assemble a few ideas, in 
aid of the seri^^^s reflections and consolatory anticipations of our dear 
young friend. You will give the letter at whatever time you think 
proper 

I am, my dear Sir, yours most truly, 

“John Foster.” 


.T. C. 


MEMOIR. 


Sarah Saunders, who died in February, 1825, in her nineteenth year, 
after an illness of six months, was strikingly distinguished throughout 
her short life, by the qualities of her character. In very early childhood 
she displayed a force and extent of intellect which placed her quite out 
of the class to which by her age she belonged. She had, indeed, the 
vivacity and activity of that age ; but over these, and in them, there pre¬ 
dominated an energy of mind. She would surprise her relatives and 
friends with conceptions and inquiries, so far beyond the ordinary reach 
of childish thought as to draw on her a sudden examining look, as it 
were, to see that the utterer of them really icas a child. She would 
listen with the utmost attention to conversations on subjects the most 
foreign to childish interests. It is, for instance, remembered that once, 
at the age of seven, she was extremely indignant at being removed, at 
her usual evening hour of going to rest, from listening to an old gentle¬ 
man, a noted political partizan, talking in a spirited manner on the na¬ 
tional affairs of France. She said she should have been delighted to 
hear him a great deal longer, adding, “ And I thought as he did.” She 
would sometimes read uninterruptedly for many hours, with an attention 
not to be diverted by surrounding objects and movements. 

Corresponding to this prematurity of intelligence was her facility, in , 
tliat earliest, and in the more advanced stages of her life, of acquiring, 
and with a peculiar comprehension and accuracy, every kind of know¬ 
ledge included in the regular course of education. And that was per¬ 
haps but the minor part of the knowledge which she was continually 
acquiring, since her mind was carried with great inquisitiveness and 
interest far out of the routine of mere school occupation, to become con¬ 
versant with various subjects, and especially with the history of great 
events and eminent characters. 

From earliest childhood she had much less than the usual measure of 
easy, undistinguishing, and implicit assent. It was always necessary 
for her to feel that she understood what she was to admit; her penetra¬ 
tion instantly perceiving what was vague or equivocal in the things 
asserted or inculcated. And when the representation was clearly intel¬ 
ligible, she would require the proof of its truth or reasonableness, and 
would fix on any defect of that proof with intellectual quickness and 


344 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


persisting objection. She was not to bo satisfied or beguiled by evasion, 
or general and unmeaning language, nor made to acquiesce in the dic¬ 
tates of mere authority. This character of mind rendered the instruc¬ 
tor’s office difficult, and sometimes very perplexing, as a counterbalance 
to the singular pleasure of having the charge of so intelligent a spirit. 

In forming opinions, even in that early period, she had remarkable 
independence of thought and positiveness of conviction. And this deter¬ 
mined character of intellect was combined with a kindred moral tempe¬ 
rament. As decided in her will as in her judgment, she would resolutely 
adhere to her purposes, or to her avowed preferences, in spite of her 
purposes being overruled. This was in her a quality of far higher order 
than mere obstinacy of temper, inasmuch as the determination of her 
will involved a vigorous exercise of thought, through which it took the 
shape of at least plausible reason and argument. The inflexibility thus 
created could not, however, but sometimes cause considerable embar¬ 
rassment to her elder relatives, to whom it belonged to direct and control 
her. She had an habitually predominant rectitude of intention, to pre¬ 
vent her acting wilfully wrong ; but then she would be herself the judge 
of what was right. So that when she practically submitted, in compli¬ 
ance with their will, it would be done in the manner of one who con¬ 
cedes a point, in deference to established regulations, and not as admitting 
the justice of the requirement in itself. 

To com])lete this strength of character, she possessed an extraordinary 
courage. It seemed as if she were constituted to be disina 5 "ed by 
nothing. There was thus a principle of congeniality in the warm ad¬ 
miration vrhich she always felt for the energetic aiid heroic class of 
characters, as exhibited in liistory or fiction. And tiiere can be no doubt 
that, on the supposition of her having attained the maturity of life, and 
being tlien led into a train of extraordinary difficulties, or thrown into 
scenes of peril and disaster, she would have evinced a spirit equal to 
every situation, and have acted with distinguished fortitude, consistency, 
and perseverance. 

If the description of such a conformation of qualities, carried forward 
through the progress of youth, should be understood to imply an unat¬ 
tractive and repellent character, it would be a very great mistake. She 
laid a strong and tenacious hold on the regard of all within the circle of 
her connexions and acquaintance. 

In childhood, as has been already said, she had much of the grace and 
sprightliness appropriate to that morning of life ; while the animation 
was the more captivating for the mental vividness which shone in it. 
She had always an inviolable regard to truth, so that the most implicit 
reliance could be placed on everything she declared or promised. And 
in action she had a strong sense of the obligation of rendering justice, 
while she claimed it. She was grateful to those from whom she expe¬ 
rienced kindness, aftectionate to those whom she esteemed, and capable 
of being deeply and ardently so to those whom she should esteem in the 


MEMOIR OF MISS SAUNDERS. 


345 


highest degree. As she approached maturity, her improving reason, hef 
extremely nice and accurate perception, and her conscience of duty, 
regulated and attempered the force of her character. Her freedom of 
opinion, and the assurance which she necessarily possessed from supe¬ 
rior intelligence and knowledge, were accompanied with an unobtrusive 
modesty ; and she had no assumption in social intercourse but that which 
was inseparable from conscious ability. She was a most attentive 
listener to the sentiments of others, with a constant desire to gain im¬ 
provement. At the same time, she was vigilantly observant of their 
characters, of which her estimates were formed with decision, but gen¬ 
erally with discrimination and equity, and a considerate attention to pro¬ 
priety as to where and in what terms she pronounced them. She was 
the most liable to be swayed from impartiality in favor of superior talent. 

In one sense of the word simplicity^ she possessed that quality in 
perfection ; that is to say, an entire freedom from all little artifice, disin¬ 
genuousness, dissimulation, affectation, and devices of display. She 
had too much sincerity and honest directness of principle, too little 
vanity, and too settled an internal confidence, to admit their being com¬ 
patible with her nature. It was not, therefore, by any studied care that 
she avoided them ; tliey were simply foreign to the constitution of her 
character. She was undesirous of attracting notice or admiration, ap¬ 
pearing much more interested in the subject itself, that at any time 
called forth her mind in social converse, than about any consideration of 
the figure she should be deemed to make in discoursing on it. She 
often would evidently be occupied with the subject alone, while those in 
her company were occupied with the subject and her. It would often 
strike them how clear she was of all petty design and self-reference, in 
giving her mind to the social discussion and conflict of sentiments. 
The pertinacity which she would sometimes manifest appeared to be not 
that of competition, but of sincere opinion, maintained not because she 
had asserted it, but because she could not see better reasons for surren¬ 
dering it. 

Simplicity in another sense, that of disclosing without reserve all that 
was within, could not, perhaps, belong to such a mind. She loved social 
converse, entered into it with great readiness and spirit, and was often, 
according to the common expression, the “ life ” of it; yet her friends, 
while they were always certain of the candid sincerity of whatever she 
did communicate, could perceive that the most lively and amicable freedom 
of intercourse still left something behind reserved from social commerce ; 
that there was, as it were, a retired apartment in her mind, where she 
had thoughts and feelings of her own secluded from inspection. They 
would often wish they could have access to that reserved interior, and 
were led sometimes into an almost impatient exercise of imagination to 
conjecture what might be there existing or passing. It was not, how¬ 
ever, from any principle of designing concealment, or self-protective cau¬ 
tion, that her most intimate consciousness was thus silent and veiled; 


34G 


LIFE OF JOHN ]H)STER. 


but from a natural insuperable indisposition to make her own mind, and 
its own exclusive interests, a subject of communication; an indisposition 
probably confirmed by finding among tlie many co-evals with whom she 
was associated in education, but little of such congeniality as would 
have drawn her out by sympathy. For though mingling with them 
often in the enjoyment of a lively activity, with a rival juvenility of alert 
and excitable spirits, she still felt she was, as to her own peculiar inter¬ 
nal self, alone. Thus at once she was practically, and to a considerable 
extent, cordially social, and yet mentally apart. 

At the same time it appeared, as another characteristic feature, that 
this limited communicativeness did not cause her any pain or restlessness, 
any fretting, impatient emotions, that she could not be in more complete 
reciprocation. All that she felt exclusively belonging to her own spirit 
and its operations she could keep to herself, with a calm independence 
of social relation; and this without anything of austerity, or alienation 
from society. 

She did, however, in her long illness, regret one effect of this reserve 
and exclusiveness in her mental habitude—the extreme indisposition and 
difficulty which she felt to converse freely on the subject of religion, as 
relative to her own situation and prospects. This difficulty was not 
overcome till near the termination of her life. 

After a representation of so much of the strong qualities in her char¬ 
acter and habits, it is the more proper to mention, that she was the 
reverse of what is commonly meant by the epithet masculine, as applied 
in a disadvantageous sense to any of the female sex. Her manners, 
always simple and natural, were as refined and feminine as her slight 
and graceful form. A stranger, who should have happened to notice a 
girl of rather diminutive proportions, marked with every delicacy of per¬ 
son and deportment, and speaking (if he had heard her speak), in a 
voice singularly soft and sweet, might have been incredulous to the in¬ 
formation, what intrepid firmness, decision of resolve, and intellectual 
force, had their dwelling in that form. Her countenance, beautiful in the 
usual sense of the word, possessed also something much beyond mere 
physical beauty,—a mental lustre, in the vivid and changing expression 
of intelligence and feeling. 

Distinguished by such a combination of qualities—the description of 
which might appear, to a person unacquainted with her, of questionable 
consistency with one another and with her age, but it is true in every 
part—she grew up in constant and uncommonly vigorous health, into 
her eighteenth year, exciting in her family and friends the highest hopes, 
not unmingled with many solicitudes. But those hopes and cares were 
destined by the Sovereign Disposer soon to cease. While on a visit to 
relatives in the immediate environs of London, she slept one nio-ht of a 
sultry summer with little covering, and without having observed (through 
the blind), that the window had been left open, in the direct current of 
an air charged with one of the penetrating noxious fogs incident to that 


MEMOIR OF MISS SAUNDERS. 


347 


vicinity. A consequent violent inflammation in the chest left, when it 
subsided, the most threatening symptoms of incipient consumption. 
After she was removed to her family at Bristol, these symptoms were 
too plainly progressive, in a slowly increasing debility ; against which, 
Jiowever, the energy of her spirit strove to maintain much of her accus¬ 
tomed activity. And as she suffered little pain, she was not sensible, for 
a while, how fatally she v/as sinking; though it w'as signified to her pious 
relatives, by professional judgment, that the result was not dubious. 
The concern wdiich those excellent relatives had always felt for her 
highest interests, became too anxious to admit of delay in apprising her 
of her situation. And as she had not in previous years betrayed any ex¬ 
press aversion to religion ; had never, as far as it is knowm, been scepti¬ 
cal of its truth ; had always paid a respectful attention to its observances, 
and had read serious books, they were willing to hope that this had been 
among the subjects which she had silently revolved in her thoughts. But 
it was, at a late period of her illness, her penitential confession, that 
from this subject, as a vital personal concern, she had been unhappily 
estranged. 

The information that the disease had the most decided indications of 
being mortal, w’as received by her in the first instance with incredulity; 
and she did not admit a full conviction till after some further progress of 
those ominous indications. Yet, before she had come to this entire con¬ 
viction, she signified, even with emphasis, her gratitude to a friend wdio 
had conveyed to her some religious thoughts and advices on the express 
assumption that, in all probabilit}^, she w^as near the end of life ; showing 
that she associated no ungracious feeling with the monitor who had 
spoken in terms of such [)resage. In yielding, by degrees, to the evi¬ 
dence that her case was so, she betrayed no weakness and but slight 
perturbation ; uttered no complaints; manifested no eagerness for expe¬ 
dients and change of ex})edients, for trial as remedies. 

This composure, however, would appear to have been at first fully as 
much of the nature of a constitutional or philosophic firmness, as of 
Christian resignation. And it required some progress of time and re¬ 
flection to bring her mind to the full, decided, habitual earnestness of 
preparing to appear before her Creator and Judge. The attainment of 
this state of mind was through degrees which her characteristic reserve 
rendered difficult to be distinctly perceived by the watchful solicitude of 
her relations. At some times this suppression of the signs of her deeper 
thoughts and emotions, together with occasional appearances of a some¬ 
what greater interest than they could have wished her to feel on subjects 
of inferior importance, made them anxious for evidence that she was 
completely aw^ake to the most momentous concern. They were not un¬ 
apprehensive lest the fearless temperament wdiich had always distin¬ 
guished her, should here have the effect of renlering her too little sensi¬ 
ble to even the solemn anticipations wdiich ought irresistibly to agitate 
the conscience and the passions. But they did not wait and pray for 


348 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


the divine influences in vain. The welcome proof was given them that 
she stilKmore and more applied herself to serious and devotional employ¬ 
ment; while every effort to assist her attainment ol just views and con¬ 
solatory hopes was received with gratitude. They had cause, besides, 
not to doubt that the reality exceeded what she was willing to show in 
appearance, or acknowledge in words, since she had always been re¬ 
markable for an aversion to forward professions, and every kind of osten¬ 
tation ;.and for such an abhorrence of being estimated above the truth 
of her character, that she would, at any time in her preceding life, rather 
keep the best indications in shade than exhibit them. So far from being 
disposed to exhibit them for the purpose of drawing applause, she would 
very reluctantly do so for self-justification. 

It was a hard and protracted discipline through which she was ap¬ 
pointed to pass. She felt with bitterness, sometimes approaching to an¬ 
guish, how much there was in the temper of her spirit which required to 
be subdued and transformed to the evangelic character. She deplored 
that, in her very prayers for that state of mind which she saw to be indis¬ 
pensable, there mingled a pride, an impatience, a defect of submission and 
faith, which might justly render them unavailing. In a later hour she 
acknowledged, in recollection of the earlier stage, that the delay of the 
divine gift of that happy change of feeling which she desired, and 
the difliculty of maintaining the strife against the opposite tendencies of 
her mind, had sometimes excited complaining emotions even against 
heaven, which in reflection alarmed her, and produced a still deeper sense 
of internal evil. 

The conviction of urgent necessity pressed upon her unremittingly; 
she felt there was absolutely one great object to be obtained. She had 
no temptation to subside into a confidence in the sufficiency of her uni¬ 
formly virtuous conduct, and to disown the sovereign claims of God upon 
the heart. She felt that there was the essential state of the character as 
towards him. And she was a keen inspector and severe judge of the 
evil that was there. Even the pride which she had to deplore was not a 
pride of merit; but a certain peculiar spirit of independence and self¬ 
dominion, which was reluctant to.sink and be prostrated in the humilia¬ 
tion of feeling herself destitute of power. Its severest mortification had 
been in the proof enforced on her by painful experience, that she was 
unable to subdue the inward perversity which she condemned, and to com¬ 
pel her mind into the state which she desired. 

This mortification was a salutary part (and the long unconquered 
principle of a spirit which had .levcr learnt to yield, required it to be a 
protracted part) of the discipline to bring her down to the complete sur¬ 
render of every kind of self-sufficiency, and to a sole reliance on the 
divine power and mercy, with a simjdicity of tru.st in the merits of Christ. 
Her attainment of this state, happily attained at length, was gradual and 
slow; indeed the whole process was painfully slow, both of her yield¬ 
ing to the subduing power of the Christian spirit, and of her admit- 


MEMOIR OF MISS SAUNDERS. 


349 


ling its consolations. And these consolations, when admitted, did not 
mitigate the severity of her self-reproach, for whatever she felt in her 
heart still unreduced and unconformed to the Christian principles and the 
divine will. She expressed an apprehension lest the exclusive trust, for 
all here and hereafter, in the sufficiency of the Redeemer, should, in im¬ 
parting an assurance of safety, be perverted to the effect of soothing her 
spiritual cares into a treacherous repose on mere safety, and diminishing 
her concern for the subduing of all sinful dispositions. 

It was a merciiul dispensation of Him wlio had appointed this lon.g and 
hard process for her soul, that her disease, without ever being equivocal 
as to the fatal character of its symptoms, adv’anced, during several 
months, by very slow degrees, and that all the while she enjo 3 ^ed the most 
quiet retirement, and the assiduous and affectionate attendance of a family 
most anxious to avert every disturbing influence, to alleviate every suffer¬ 
ing, and to impart instruction and consolation at every opportune moment. 

In the decline of her strength it was very natural she should be reluc¬ 
tant to sink into helplessness and complete dependence; and the insup- 
pressible vigor of her mind maintained a surprising power of even 
bodily activity during the progressive debilitation of her fame. But she 
observed that progress, and would, from one week to another, and with a 
calmness increasing with the diminution of power, notice somo particu¬ 
lar action which she had been able to perform a little while since, but 
could now no longer. She had always been an animated admirer of the 
- beauties of nature, and to even a far advanced period of her decline, she 
was gratiffed and exhilarated in being taken out on short excursions over 
the adjacent picturesque country. In the last instance of being borne 
towards the carriage, she suffered so distressing a seizure as to threaten 
instant dissolution in the attempt. And then she .seemed to feel a mental 
pang, from this sudden evidence that she had looked on the face of na¬ 
ture for the last time. But it was a transient emotion. In her habitual 
feelings and meditations, she had already yielded herself up as belong¬ 
ing to death more than to life. 

One day, having been at her particular desire left alone with the phy¬ 
sician, she requested, in a tone that would not be denied, to be informed 
how long he should judge it probable she might live. Not without re¬ 
luctance, and after deliberation, he named the term of six or seven 
weeks; but intimating also, that her situation was such that any day 
might be the last. Her friends found her perfectly composed, on return¬ 
ing to her after he was gone. 

It should seem that, though it was religion that vanquished the fear of 
death, it’ was not the sole cause of the willingness which she avowed to 
part with life. The writer of this memorial of her, congratulating her 
on having gained a victory over that most natural affection, the love of. 
life, was somewhat surprised to hear her reply, in her easy and unaffect¬ 
edly decided manner of expression, that that was not so much of a con¬ 
quest, for that she had never been strongly attached to life. It appeared 


350 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


that, in the bloom and animation of youth, with flattering worldly pros¬ 
pects before her, and while she was the object of the affection and admi¬ 
ration of her friends, she had never been sanguine and romantic as to 
the possible felicities of the human lot on earth. The tendency so na¬ 
tural to youth, to indulge a warm presumption of those possibilities, had 
in her been repressed, partly by a clear-sighted observation of the actual 
conditions of life; among which, she said, in answer to a question on 
the subject, slie had never seen tlie example of one which she could have 
been willing to accept for her own. 

When such an estimate, formed even in health, of the prospects Of life 
in this world, was combined in far advanced sickness, with the deliberate 
hope of a better, it was not wonderful to observe the unhesitating, the 
remarkably absolute though quiet manner, in which she spontaneously 
said, she would not, supposing it were possible and could be offered to 
her, return to that life from which she was receding; the only regret 
which she expressed being, that hers should have been a life in which 
there had been so little service to God. 

The acceleration of disease and debility, in the last few weeks, sub¬ 
jected her to severe suffering, from violent cough, laboriousness of 
breathing, the difficulty of speaking, and the restlessness of frequent 
feverish agitation, all pressing on the feebleness of an exhausted frame, 
and causing also, what she painfully felt, an inability for any continued 
exercise of thought. And there were moments of insuppressible irrita¬ 
bility, which was deplored with a bitterness of self-reproach which her 
friends regretted as excessive. There was no wane of the clearness and 
active power of her faculties. There was the same quick perception, 
acuteness of distinction, and versatility of observation, with occasional 
pleasing sparkles of vivacity, and with the most prompt excitability to 
intellectual discourse, in tlie intervals of somewhat remitted suffering; 
though this would be too often at the cost of aggravating the return of 
that suffering. The discriminative quality of her observations and ques¬ 
tions required no small effort of mind on the part of those who had to 
reply. 

Her kind and grateful alTections, as occasions called them forth, 
seemed to become more warmly manifested. But what gratified her 
pious attendants the most was, that she was at length set much at liberty 
from that reserve which had so long obstructed their intimate knowledge 
of her religious feelings. She ingenuously disclosed various particulars 
of the past state of her mind, spoke with freedom and simplicity of her 
present entire dependence, as a guilty and humbled being, on the divme 
mercy, as obtained alone through the merits of Jesus Christ; and ex¬ 
pressed a calm and brightening hope of happiness hereafter,—a happi¬ 
ness of which the essential principle would be, a deliverance, complete 
and eternal, from all that places the soul out of harmony with God. 

She testified thankfulness for her long sickness itself, and for those at¬ 
tendant circumstances of it which had been so favorable for the course 


LETTERS. 


351 


of discipline through which she had been conducted. Her directions for 
the disposal of some little concerns, her recollections of the kindness of 
various friends, her wishes for the welfare of survivors, her references to 
the truths and consolations of religion, her notice of surrounding occur¬ 
rences, were all expressed as in the explicit anticipation of the impend¬ 
ing change. Slie beheld the vision of another world growing, in each 
brief lapse of time, more plainly discernible through the shades of death ; 
and was waiting, in expectation and in readiness, for the signal. She 
retained an undiminished exercise of intellect, the most perfect presence 
of mind, in her latest hours. In nearly the last, her devout sentiments 
toward the supreme Benefactor were mingled with kindness towards 
the mortal friends she was going to leave; and she named with affec¬ 
tionate gratitude those who had endeavored to aid her preparation for 
this linal scene. As she felt the struggle of the living principle fast 
subsiding, and when the power of utterance was on the point of wholly 
failing, she observed (and repeated the expression, “ Once to die !”), 
how truly this was the mysterious act of dying. After every attempt to 
speak had ceased, and her eyes had closed, a few moments before the last 
perceptible breathing, she made, by a gentle movement of the hand, a 
sign which her attendants perfectly understood as expressive of her adieu. 

The earthly form, as soon as the spirit was tied, appeared reduced al¬ 
most to a shadow. Ihfe had been protracted, through the energy of that 
spirit, till the extreme resources of animal nature were consumed. 

The deep regrets of the affectionate relatives for the loss of such a 
being were consoled by the benignant light of Heaven, which had thus 
been shed on the concluding period of her life ; for amidst their sorrow 
they could rejoice in the assurance, that through the sovereign efficacy 
of divine grace and the atoning sacrifice, she is gone to a world where 
it will be unspeakable delight to meet her again. 


LETTERS 


FROx^ MR. FOSTER TO BUSS SAUNDERS. 

I. 

Stapleton, September 11, 1824. 

My dear young Friend, —When I tell you that, almost from your 
childhood, I have taken an unusual degree of interest in your character, 
and that since you approached to maturity I have been gratified in being 
regarded by you as one of your sincerest friends, you will allow my 
claim to the right of expressing to you the deep concern, which I share 
with your most excellent relatives, for your present state of languor and 
increasing illness. Your return to your friends was looked for with 


352 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


very different anticipations. We hoped to see you in firm-health, with a 
vigor fitted, as we were sure it would be devoted, to the zealous prose¬ 
cution of every valuable improvement, and with the prospects of life 
extending before you; and you would yourself quite naturally entertain 
some pleasing and youthful visions in relation to those prospects. But, 
Miss Sarah, I think I cannot be mistaken in believing, that you were 
never beguiled, in any such measure as young persons generally are, 
with the flatteries and delusions of sanguine imagination. I am confi¬ 
dent that the forms of temporal hope would often fade under your deep 
reflection, aided by your observation of actual human life ; and that you 
have fully admitted the conviction, even in the bright morning of life, that 
il is really true —what the warnings of religion, and the testimony of expe¬ 
rience constantly affirm to us—that a profound sense of dissatisfaction 
and disappointment attends on all that this world has to give. And to a 
mind like yours the solemn idea will, inevitably, have often presented 
itself,—as one which it were perfect folly to endeavor to exclude and 
forget,—that' the end will come, and that the intermediate time will at 
tlie longest soon pass away. Therefore, a state of sickness and suffering 
does not come on you, as it would on the gay and thoughtless young 
persons, as a mere sad surprise, a melancholy blast of every cherished 
interest and hope, a disappointment of all your anticipations. It comes as 
tliat which many a serious reflection has admonished you might come 
—might come even thus prematurely. And it is most consolatory to 
your friends to have reason to believe that these reflections have been 
made conducive, under the Divine instruction, to prepare you for the 
visitation. 

IMy dear young friend, it would have been delightful to all that best 
know your value, and the very uncommon measure of mental endow¬ 
ment that heaven has conferred on you, to see you advancing in every 
virtue and estimable attainment, progressively exemplifying the power 
of religion, and enjoying its happiness, and exerting a beneficent influ¬ 
ence on all around you, with a prospect of your long surviving all of 
us your eider friends. But if i/g, who is the sovereign and gracious 
Disposer of our life and all our interests, has determined otherwise, it is, 
indeed. Miss Sarah,?/ ?s,because that will be better; and you yourself will 
know and pronounce it to be better. Oh it is better to be a happy 
and immortal being in the presence and enjoyment of the infinite good, 
and mingling in the society of angelic spirits, and of the “ spirits of 
the just” that are already associated with them, than to stay in this 
world, in even the happiest lot that Providence ever allots to the most 
favored of mortals. To make a complete, final, triumphant escape from 
all the evils of our degraded and afflicted nature, and this melancholy 
world ; to be clearly and for ever beyond the region, and beyond all 
possibility, of sin and sorrow—this is worth resigning all on earth to 
attain. It is worth resigning every imagined felicity on earth that you, 
Sarah, ever ventured, in the most sanguine moment of your musings 


LETTERS. 


353 


and hopes, to picture to yourself as possible to your attainment in this 
world. 

Your pious and estimable father is now inconceivably happier than all 
whom he left behind. And if you be prematurely called (as human 
judgment accounts prematurely) to go where he is gone, you will look 
back on the moment of removal with a divine delight; and not all that is 
tlic most desirable and noble on earth will raise in your happy spirit one 
transient wisli that you had had a more protracted appointment here. 
But, my dear friend, do you shrink from the solemn transition lest the 
grand interest should not be safe,—lest you should be found unprepared 
to meet Him, whose summons is to be obeyed ? You are too reflective 
to indulge a thoughtless and presumptuous confidence, and far too well 
instructed in evangelical truth to place any dependence on merits of your 
own. That truth requires us to sinlt, under conscious guilt, in deep hu¬ 
miliation before our righteous Judge, to fall before him in self-condemna¬ 
tion and penitence, but only in order to rise in hope and faith, resting 
on the great atonement. Living or dying we have no other resource ; 
but we have this resource ; and this is a//-sufhcient. In the strength 
of this., we can approach the divine throne, to plead for pardon, and to 
plead against the fear of death ; and on tlie strength of this, how many, 
on the very brink of death, amidst the shadows and gleams of approach¬ 
ing eternity, have exulted to make the grand and final adventure! and 
so I trust will my young friend, whenever, be it sooner or later, she shall 
bo called to leave mortality behind. 

The grand point is, to be quite in earnest, persistingly so, in applying 
to the heavenly and almighty Power, for the communication of pardon- 
iiiD-, assisting, transforming grace, for victory over unbelief, and for a 
happy immortality. The result of such persisting earnestness is infal¬ 
lible. 

I trust my dear friend’s mind is too well fortified to be pained by my 
having so unequivocally referred to the too probable issue of her present 
illness. You know, Sarah, how happy all your friends would be if the 
presages might prove to be mistaken; but at the same time, I can¬ 
not doubt, you are aware liow strong those presages are deemed to be. 
You will calmly and piously prepare for what men call the icorst ,—but 
what to you, if such should be the event, will, I hope and trust, be in¬ 
finitely the best. Believe me to be, my dear young friend, with the most 
cordial regard, yours, 

J. Foster. 


II. 

My dear young Friend, —The kind and candid spirit in which I 
am assured that you received a former expression of interest in your 
present situation and prospects, would be enough to give me confidence 
that any renewed suggestions to you of the same serious tendency will 
VOL. II. 



354 


J^IFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


not be unwelcome. But independently of this, I could well trust to the 
vigorous character of your mind, and to the habits acquired by its having 
often been directed to grave and high subjects in the season of health, 
for assurance of not being regarded by you as a too officious friend and 
monitor. Your mind. Miss Sarah, has been no stranger to thoughts of 
the higher order ; and the conviction of your judgment could not, for 
years past, have left it possible to admit even a transient imagination 
tliat it would be a happiness to be able to turn from them and forget 
them. You are not therefore now, by the departure of health, and the 
receding of life, forced with a mortal reluctance on a scene of thought 
fearfaily foreign, desolate, and uncongenial with all that* you had will- 
ingly given your attention to before. Be thankful for every previous 
monition, every -conviction, and emotion of conscience, by which you 
arc the better prej)ared for that deeper seriousness of thought required 
by your present situation. And do not repine, do not account it a hard 
appointment, that, while so many, of your youthful age, are at this hour 
i-q)rightly and volatile, and intent alone on the vanities of sublunary plea¬ 
sure and hope, you are summoned to give your mind to an employment 
of the gravest importance. You, Miss Sarah, appear to be now ap¬ 
proaching the moment from which you are certain to be occupied with 
great subjects and emotions for ever, and you will feel the wisdom and 
necessity of employing much of the perhaps'very limited previous space 
of time in such an exercise of thought as may conduce to prepare you, 
through the divine assistance, for entering happily on that never-ending 
train. And allow me, my dear friend, to suggest to you, that, if you 
shall sulier, as may be expected, a progressive debility of your frame, 
the mind will too j)robably sympathize with it, and become less able to 
sustain the effort of fixed and prolonged thought. It will, therefore, be 
happy if you noio leave nothing undone that you may then be unable to 
do. You arc not surprised at this explicitness in anticipating the result 
of your illness, being, I believe, aware that all the fond hopes of your 
friends are surrendered;—but surrendered to the disposing will of un¬ 
erring wisdom and goodness. But yet, how difficult it is for them to 
realize in jirospect the affecting fact! Last evening I had a strange 
feeling of mysteriousness and wonder, which seemed to say, “ Can it be, 
that the being who is now sensibly here, the present living object of so 
mut.n interest, conversing with us, and listening to us, will, actually, a 
little while hence, be withdrawn from the intercourse of mortal society, 
and from the world ; and have entered into a community of another 
order, and be in the very midst of those realities which can be unveiled 
to no inhabitant of the earth ? Can there be so vast a change ? and 
can she not be delayed and detained by her friends, to await that change 
at some period many years distant ? But if she cannot, it is because her 
heavenly Father requires her presence elsewhere, and calls her away. 
And surely it is because he wills tint she shall not be exj)osed to the 
sorrows and the sinful influences of an evil world,—and because the 
Redeemer of her soul has already prepared for her a happier abode.” 


LETTERS. 


355 


The assurance of this, my dear friend, will be an animating consola¬ 
tion to your friends when, if such prove to be the divine destination, you 
shall have hjft them,—left them but for a while, for it will be their pleas¬ 
ing hope to see you again;—and all of us, if it is our appointment to 
stay here a little longer than you, shall feel one persuasive and attrac¬ 
tive inducement more, from your removal to the invisible world, to carry 
our contemplations to that scene. I hope, Sarah, it is not needful to 
repeat the admonition to you, in terms of strong enforcement, that the 
time is most precious. It would indeed be so, though there were the 
probability that years of it were yet to come and be expended ; but how 
emphatically important the passing days and hours become when they 
are apparently approaching the latest allotment of time ; when the omens 
are, that there will be but a short interval before your adieu to this 
world; before you will cease to be within the sphere of this earth, and 
these skies; before you will have passed beyond the region and the 
time for the exercise of prayer, contrition, and faith ; and before you 
will feel the mightiest evidence that you are actually in an economy new 
and inexpressibly solemn. The relations of that sublime economy are 
closely laying hold upon you ; and it is the dictate of the soberest reason 
to be solicitous to be conformed and adapted to them, so as to be pre¬ 
pared to enter into its reality without danger and fear. And think in 
what manner the employment of the concluding portion of life and time 
will be looked back upon wheli the spirit has entered there !—of what 
value, of what importance, the earnest continued supplications of the 
divine mercy will then be felt to have been ! What joy it will then be 
to have given all diligence to this !—to feel that the great concluding 
labor of life was effectually done! 

With regard to what it is that constitutes a right preparation for going 
into the presence of God, there need no minute theological discrimina¬ 
tions. To be reconciled to him, to be at peace with him, to enjoy his 
forgiveness and love ,—that is the condition for appearing before him, and 
abiding in his presence for ever. The fatal thing to be removed and 
destroyed that we may be at peace with him, is sin. It is because our 
nature is depraved that we are not in affectionate harmony with him ; 
and it is because we are guilty that we dread him. And that which 
renders him an object of dread, is what causes also the dread of death; 
“ the sting of death is sin.” The conscience of a being who is solicitous 
to be prepared for death, and delivered from its fear, has to take solemn 
account of sin, not merely, not chiefly, as a certain measure of direct 
practical transgression, but in a far deeper, wider character. There 
may have been but little, comparatively, of this more palpable form of 
guilt Jn the life of a young person of virtuous habits and favorable 
situation. 

The grand evil, my dear friend, is the deficiency of the heart towards 
God and spiritual and eternal interests. It is the not being animated 
with his love, not gratefully and habitually regarding him as the source 
of all good, not acknowledging him as supreme goodness itself, not 


356 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


thinking and acting constantly with the express purpose of plea'sing 
him, not desiring a communion with him, not earnestly aspiring to his 
presence as the greatest and the final felicity; in short, “ loving the 
creature more than the Creator.” Add to this, the not feeling a restless, 
unappeasable impatience of such a perverted, unhappy state of the heart, 
and an indifference to the grand expedient of the divine appointment and 
mercy for the redemption of the soul from this state of evil and from 
its consequences, by Jesus Christ. This, all this, is the fatal malady of 
our nature, of which practical sins are but the extreme indications and 
results, and which may exist in sad prevalence within, though those ex¬ 
ternal iniquities be but fev/ and slight, according to the ordinary standard 
of the world’s morality. It is here that we need pardoning mercy to 
remove the guilt, and the operations of the Divine Spirit to transform 
our nature and reverse its tendencies. It is thus alone that we can be 
made fit for the communion and felicity of heaven. And these all-im¬ 
portant pre-requisites are promised and imparted through our Mediator 
and his great sacrifice. How important that we have a profound and 
affecting conviction that these blessings are the all in all for us, for here 
and hereafter; and that we “ look to Jesus,” as the sacred medium of 
their communication, with the grateful affection, and confiding faith, 
claimed by him who has offered himself as an atonement for our sins, 
and opened for us an entrance into the eternal paradise. With these 
convictions of guilt powerfuliy impressed, and this view of the Mediator, 
by whicli all our guilt can be removed from the soul, and dissevered 
from its destiny in the life to come, we shall approach both earnestly and 
“ boldly, to the throne of grace, to obtain mercy, and find grace to help 
in the time of need.” 

b>o may you feel, my dear friend ; so may you importunately petition 
the almighty Power ; and then you may look forward with complacency 
to the final hour, and with exultation to the prospect of all that is beyond 
it. You will };erform the last great act of mortal existence as one who 
is ascending with dignity to a liigher existence, in a state whither your 
pious friends will ere long follow to rejoin you. I will confidently assure 
myself of your friendly sentiment in receiving this one more slight testi¬ 
mony of an interest in what you are, and are going to be. 

Methinks if I had been a person in the prime of life and health, I 
.should have felt some reluctance to adopt such a train of admonition. It 
would have seemed as if I were saying,—“ I have long to live, and to 
.see and enjoy all I could wish of this world, but yon are soon to leave 
it.” It might be, to apprehension, something like assuming a vantage 
ground. But a person in the decline of life, and a greater decline of 
health, is approaching much ne.arer to community of situation with one 
who is preparing to make the last surrender. And the thoughts which 
I suggest to you, my dear young friend, I feel the necessity of inculcat¬ 
ing with all possible force on myself. 

Believe me, most sincerely yours, 

J. Foster. 


LETTERS. 


357 


III. 

My dear young Friend,— I will presume that one more short expres¬ 
sion of friendly regard will not be unacceptable to you. While your 
friends feel they have no power to arrest and detain you, in that progress 
in which they see you still retiring, by a slow gradation, beyond their 
earthly circle, their affectionate interest will faithfully accompany yOu to 
the last, and will follow you when they cannot, for a while, convey to 
you the testimonies of it. I repeat,/or « ; and the melancholy 

sentiment, which would otherwise sadden every communication with a 
friend in such circumstances as yours, is alleviated, is s'ometimes sus¬ 
pended, by the pleasing hope of attaining, after a while, a recovered pre¬ 
sence and communication, in a state where there will be no impending 
event to threaten their loss. You have been very much favored, in the 
gentle and protracted manner in which you have been thus far conducted 
toward the point where a new scene is to open before you, and to receive 
you, and which has already received so many who have “ sought a better 
country.” Several months since, your friends were warned that they 
w'ere not to expect to retain you so long. The absence of the pain, and, 
in a considerable degree, of the distressing restlessness which in many 
instances attend the complaint, has saved the vital principle from being 
harassed and rapidly exhausted. This privilege, of prolonged time and 
exemption from severe suffering, has been a valuable indulgence to you 
from the Author and Disposer of life. And I feel assured that you 
estimate it aright, and are availing yourself of it to the most important 
account. You have had a great, a very great and difficult object to 
accomplish. For a person in the vernal animation, vigor, and prospects 
of youth (prospects in your case unusually flattering), to come delibe¬ 
rately to the decided position of being willing to surrender life, is indeed 
an arduous achievement. A generous sympathy is excited at seeing a 
young person making this noble struggle, and succeeding; a sympathy 
of that kind which we feel in beholding the faculties and virtues of some 
estimable being brought to the trial of a new and formidable crisis. You, 
Sarah, have been brought to this hard conflict of the soul; and it is a 
most grateful pleasure to be able to congratulate you, as I am assured I 
may with truth, on having overcome. It is a high attainment, eminently 
worth all it has cost you; all the sickness, the solicitude, the serious 
thought, the prayer, by which you have been exercised and trained to it. 
If you revert to some preceding period, say but a year since, and make 
the supposition that you could then have been warned by some infallible 
prescience, that you would at this time be as near as you now deem 
yourself to be to the conclusion of life, you probably can feel that, not¬ 
withstanding your having been previously no stranger to serious con¬ 
sideration, you would have felt you had before you a fearful difficulty, 
in the attainment of a resignation to so early a removal. You would 
have looked on this difficulty with a degree of dismay ; like a traveller 


358 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


arrived in front of a vast and steep mountain, which he must pass over, 
and which he views Avith an apprehensive and anxious question within 
himself, how it can possibly he surmounted. Think, then, what gratitude 
you owe to that good Spirit that has enabled you to overcome the natural 
horror of the great change, to resign yourself to the divine appointment 
with a full persuasion that it is a wise and gracious one, and to look with 
fortitude at the apparently near approach of the event. Do you not 
think, that this is an incomparably greater attainment than any, or all, 
of your past life ? Would you—if it were possible such a thing might 
be placed at your choice—would you, Sarah, deliberately choose to be 
carried back to the state of health and promising appearance for long 
life, hut with the loss of what you have gained since your illness —the loss 
of this resigned willingness to part with life ? If you would not, you 
feel that you have gained something better than health and life. Yet 
even this grand advantage itself is but a small possession in comparison 
with what, I trust, you are next to gain. 

Your judgment will have been seriously exerted to verify the genuine¬ 
ness of the principle of your acquiescence in the divine will, and of your 
deliverance from the dread of dissolution. You have understood Chris¬ 
tianity too well to have been, at any moment, capable of being content 
with anything of the nature of a mere Stoical submission and resolution 
to meet what is inevitable. In reading the speculations, and some recorded 
examples, of this temper of mind, one has felt to be looking on a spectacle 
hardly less melancholy to behold than an utter thoughtlessness of death 
on the one hand, or an unsubdued, insuperable horror of it on the other. 
For our attaining such fortitude or consolation (if it can be so named), 
there was no need for the Son of God to come to deliver from the fear 
of death, by dying a sacrifice for our sins, and “ bringing life and im¬ 
mortality to light.” The true victory over the fear of death consisting 
in a good hope of immortal happiness beyond it, is that in which the 
soul is fortified, not by a cold and desperate firmness to sustain, because 
we cannot help it, a grievous loss, but by the contemplation of an infinite 
gain. And according to the word of divine truth, mightily seconded by 
the inward consciousness of every humble and contrite spirit, that hope 
can find no solid ground to rest upon but the efficacy of the sufferings 
and intercession of Christ. And we really and effectually place our hope 
on this ground, when, with a firm belief in the perfect efficacy of the 
work of Christ, we are enabled also to direct our affections to him as 
having accomplished it, and to desire and pray earnestly to be interested 
in it, so as to appropriate its efficacy, to rely upon it, and plead it before 
the throne of the Divine Justice, renouncing from the heart every other 
dependence. This sincere and earnest desire, this strife and application 
of the soul directed to the great Source of mercy, this pertinacious going 
forth of the spirit to God as granting pardon and justification through 
Jesus Christ: this is the essential thing. A state of mind truly and 
prevailingly such as this, has the divine promise of safety to the supreme 


LETTERS. 


859 


interest, though it may not always banish every trembling apprehension. 
There may be granted to this state a more entire, or a less absolutely 
complete, sense of assurance; but generally it will result in such satisfac¬ 
tory hope, as will predominate on the whole over the fear of death. May 
this happiness be yours, my dear young friend, in advancing degrees 
and full confirmation ! 

When the soul looks from tliis high evangelic ground of confidence in 
the divine mercy, on the near approach of death, how changed is the 
appearance of that formidable power from the aspect which it is wont to 
present to our timorous nature ! It now no longer appears in the almost 
exclusive light of a doom, as.the execution of an awful sentence, as a 
rending of our vital connections with our present state of being. True, 
it is all this; but it is also something infinitely different and better. It 
is now beheld as a mode of transition to a higher state of existence,— 
a painful mode, indeed, and of alarming character, from the vastness and 
the unknown nature of the expected change; but perfectly safe, because 
the Almighty Friend will-be nigh to answer to the call, ‘Mnto thy hand 
I commit my spirit,” and to support his feeble servant in the last con¬ 
juncture in which that servant can suffer or be intimidated. It is re¬ 
garded, too, as a change absolutely indispensable in order to the attain¬ 
ment of that to which every pious and enlightened spirit aspires; inas¬ 
much as icithout some such mighty change, it is impossible for the spirit¬ 
ual nature to be set free from the mean, corruptible, mortal elements with 
which it is mingled, and above all, from sin. It is plainly seen, that the 
soul must go into another state of existence, in order to the attainment 
of an eternal innocence and sanctity, to the attainment of that restora¬ 
tion to the divine likeness which will bring the soul into affectionate 
communion with the Father of spirits. How obvious is it, too, that there 
must be a change, like that accomplished through death, in order to the 
enlargement of our faculties, to the extension of the sphere of their never- 
remitting, never-tiring exertion, to their enjoying a vivid perception of 
truth, in a continually expanding manifestation of it, and to their enter¬ 
ing, sensibly and intimately, into happier and more exalted society than 
any that can exist on earth. Sometimes, while you are thinking of that 
world unseen which is now an object of your faith, but may soon be dis¬ 
closed to you in its wondrous reality, it will occur to you, how many 
most interesting inquiries to which there is here no reply, will, to you, 
be changed into knowledge !—how many things will be displayed to your 
clear and delighted apprehension, which the most powerful intellect, 
while yet confined in the body, conjectures and inquires after in vain. 
What a mighty scene of knowledge and felicity there is, which it is ne¬ 
cessary to die in order to enter into! Yes, to be fully, sublimely, un¬ 
changeably happy, it is necessary to die. For the soul to be redeemed 
to liberty and purity,—to rise from darkness to the great vision of truth, 
—to be resumed into the presence of its Divine Original,—to enter into 
the communion of the Mediator of the new testament and of the spirits 
of the just, it is necessary to die ! 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 




I hope that the prospect of arriving at that happiness will animate you, 
dear Sarah, through the remaining period during which your mortal 
friends shall be permitted to detain you among them; and that in approach¬ 
ing the dark confine which you have to pass, you will possess so effec¬ 
tual a superiority over the dread of it, imparted by the all-gracious Spirit, 
through working in you a still more and more confirmed faith in the 
Redeemer, that your gradual retiring from your friends may have far less 
of the mournful character of going to bid them adieu, than of the cheer¬ 
ful one of inviting them in their due time to follow you. 

I remain, my dear young friend. 

Yours, with the most friendly regard, 

John Foster. 


IV. 

December 1S24. 

My dear young Friend, —One more of the great marked periods of 
our time is just closing upon us. To-morrow there will be interchanged 
an infinite number of expressions of felicitation and good wishes. The 
year will begin with a profusion of gaieties, convivialities, and amuse¬ 
ments. And think how many hearts are full of lively anticipations of 
the wants of the year,—how many minds busy with the projects to be 
accomplished in it. Innumerable youthful ones, especially, are indulg¬ 
ing and reciprocating delightful fancies of pleasures, adventures or at¬ 
tainments, which they are confident the coming year will lavish on them, 
—a year through which, and a very long train of subsequent ones, they 
make sure of their continuance in this world. Such vivacities, schemes, 
and hopes, are dilating the hearts and inspiriting the companies, of mul¬ 
titudes of your co-evals. But you, dear Sarah, are left apart. No lively 
meeting expects tjou to be of the party. No projects for the year are 
formed with the calculation that you are to be a participator. Every in¬ 
dulged thought and scheme of social, terrestrial happiness leaves you 
out. You are regarded as bearing the signs of another destination—as 
a marked victim, from which all are to retire. 

But, in the view of a contemplative mind, you become, from this very 
situation, invested with a far higher character. There seems to hover 
round you a certain strange and mysterious importance, as of a being 
belonging less to this world than to another and greater. And a friend 
like me, with a strong native disposition to pensive and even melancholy 
reflection, and now by the decline of life continually reminded of its^ ter¬ 
mination, feels it a far more interesting employment to comfliunicate 
thoughts to you, in your present situation, than to share the intercourse 
of the most cheerful society of persons in health. 

Since the time when you became convinced that your life was ap¬ 
proaching its conclusion, and since you have been enabled to yield a sub¬ 
mission to the appointment, you must have felt yourself on a strangely 



LETTERS. 


361 


new ground of existence. Perhaps there are moments when you can 
hardly realize to yourself the fact that the case is so. Indeed, I cannot 
sometimes without difficulty do it myself, when I see you, or think of 
you, and recollect how lately you were in the utmost vigor of health. 
At the beginning of this year what an effort of thought it would have 
required but to imagine,yourself in such a situation at the end of it. 
But, dear Sarah, how much more it surpasses your utmost power of 
thought to imagine the situation you shall be in by the time that the year 
now commencing shall have come to an end! And how striking to think 
that it will be an actual situation^ that you will know and feel what it is, 
and that you will be able to compare it with the conceptions previously 
endeavored to be formed of it; though it will not be permitted you by the 
laws of that economy to convey an image of it to your surviving friends. 
But I trust in the divine mercy, dear Sarah, that it will be to you a state 
of such felicity as you will be sensible that no language which they can 
understand could adequately describe; and then it will appear to you but 
a very little thing to have died to attain it. And then, how far will you 
be from all regret that your life on earth has been so short. 

It is perfectly natural that some emotions of this regret should at times 
have arisen in your mind, since your illness assumed a decidedly fatal 
character. Without indulging a rebellious sentiment against Supreme 
Wisdom, you may have sufiered many a deeply painful struggle between 
the fond attachment to life and your consciousness of the ominous indi¬ 
cations that you were losing it. You may have pensively mused on 
your lot, and thought. Why so brief and rapid a passage through time ? 
Why smitten in the opening prime of life, when my faculties are but 
just reaching to maturity, when I have but just begun to make my 
experiment on the possibilities of good in this life, and when I felt an 
impulse and an energy that would have carried me into that experiment 
with such distinguished advantage ? Why appointed to encounter the 
dread enemy in my path at so early a stage, while I see such numbers 
around me going freely on in theirs ? Why just show me this world, to 
tell me that nothing in it is to be mine ? 

My dear friend, it would have been contrary to the principles of our 
nature for you not to have felt some emotions of this kind ; you may 
have felt them at some moments with a bitter pang. The merciful 
Father above has great indulgence and compassion for a sentiment which 
he has himself planted in the heart, by the constitution which he has 
given it. And he does not require from his frail mortal child an acqui¬ 
escence in his sovereign will without unfolding to her in prospect some¬ 
thing which will be a compensation, and infinitely more than a 
compensation for what she is called to resign. He thus, as it were, sets, 
aside his absolute right of sovereignty to appeal to your judgment and 
your gratitude, by exhibiting to you a grand advantage to be given you 
in the mortal exchange. This sublime object of hope, combined with a 
firm faith in his infinite wisdom and benignity, is the powerful principle 


362 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER, 


to suppress every murmur, and to reconcile you, and much more than 
merely reconcile you, to pass, at his call, from tlie scene of life and youth 
through the gloom of death—the transient gloom, dear Sarah—for how 
quickly when you arrive at it will you pass through it, and beyond it! 

Besides these higher considerations, you will sometimes recur to that 
(which has been adverted to before) of the true estimate of this life and 
this world. You can now make that estimate under a clearer light than 
at the beginning of the year that has now closed. But did you really 
ever, with a confidence that lasted any considerable time, represent to 
yourself a life of very high and nearly continuous felicity, as possible in 
this world ? Have you ever seen an instance which excited your envy in 
a very high degree—an actual condition tlie exact parallel to which you 
thought would satisfy your wishes ? Or, if you have seen such a 
model displayed m fiction, did yon fail to perceive some great fallacy in 
the representation, when you considered for a moment how it could be 
realized in actual life ? Did you ever, for an hour, fora minute, seriously 
fancy you could perhaps select and bring together, at your will, all, or a 
very preponderating majority of, the materials and elements of temporal 
happiness, and combine them into an actual state in which you eould feel 
an entire complacency ; thus constructing for yourself a state of life (a 
state to be real) by an assemblage of what seemed to you the very best 
part of one person’s lot, and of another’s, and another’s ? Could you 
overlook even the circumstance, that persons of your sex have, as pecu¬ 
liar to it, many things against them for the happiness of life ? In short, 
did you ever, either at once or by successive additions to the imaginary 
model, sketch for yourself a condition of life, and then deliberately say— 
“ This would be to be deeply, amply, satisfactorily happy ; and this shall 
assuredly be realized in my advancing life ? ” No, Sarah ; I do believe 
that your youthful imagination never did, for more than a passing 
moment, flatter you to this degree of beguilement. I am persuaded, too, 
that in the recent period of your life you could not have ventured, and 
would have been checked by your conscience if you had attempted, to 
imagine any scheme of happiness as satisfactory, in which religion 
should not have been an essential part. But that changes the whole 
theory of happiness in this life ; when you admitted that into your 
scheme, you admitted that all temporal felicity is most imperfect and pre¬ 
carious, and treacherous too ; you admitted that this life, this world itself, 
“ is not our rest,” is not the scene for a true and elevated happiness, 
and that whenever the will of God shall be so, it is even better to die 
than to live. When, therefore, you look on life, with all its possible 
temporal felicities, as denied you, you will calmly estimate what it is 
only that you have surrendered. 

But, my dear friend, I trust that such reflections on the vanity of 
mortal life, on the utter unsatisfactoriness of all sublunary good, even 
supposing it to have been fully attainable by you had your life been 
prolonged, are now become almost superfluous to you ; for I am happy 


LETTERS. 


863 


to believe that you have been enabled, in the prevailing state of your 
feeling, to make the surrender of your life, and of all that might have 
seemed possible to be attained and enjoyed in its ])rolongation, to the 
decree of your merciful Father ; that you can say, witli cordial acqui¬ 
escence, Thy will be done,” while you see the world which so lately 
extended its prospects before you, now all retiring behind you. Nottliat 
you can with invariable indifference look back on what is departing ; 
there will be moments when your spirit will “ cast a lingering look 
behindwhen you will have cause to wish you could make a more 
entire transfer of the warm interest of the heart from the life that you 
are leaving to which you are approaching. But I trust that you will be 
favored with such divine assistance that the habit of your mind shall be 
that of looking resignedly back, and with intentness and earnest devo¬ 
tional solicitude to that which is before you. There may at some 
moments arise in your mind a certain strange wondering and dubious 
emotion, Avhich almost questions the reality of your situation, that almost 
prompts you to say, “ Can it be, is it a real truth, that I shall soon be no 
longer here—that a few weeks hence I shall actually not be conversing 
with these friends, not inhabiting these apartments, not reading these 
books, not looking out upon this scene of nature and human existence, 
not praying in the body to the Father of my spirit ? Is it a reality, and 
no dream, that even now a commissioned angel is waiting his great 
Master’s signal to come to this very apartment where I think, or where 
I slumber ?” 

But the solemn fact still returns upon your consciousness with une¬ 
quivocal, unchanging evidence. You feel the entire conviction still 
abiding that it is even so, that you will soon have left these friends, these 
apartments, these occupations, this body; and that the eyes of your 
spirit will open on the messenger from heaven. How affecting to your 
friends, dear Sarah, in an hour that is to arrive, to find that, unseen to 
them, he has come, and that their young friend is gone. But how happy 
for them to have good cause to believe that your departing spirit rose up 
in sacred transport to accompany him ! And while they cherish you 
in affectionate remembrance as long as they stay on earth, how often 
will they indulge a profound, contemplative wonder what the nature of 
that state may be to which they will rejoice to assure themselves that 
you have ascended, through your interest in the great Sacrifice—through 
the merits of Him who died that penitent believing sinners might live, 
and live for ever. Think, my dear friend, of Him as dying, and having, 
by devoting himself to die, conquered death, divested it of its terrors, 
consecrated and dignified it, and transformed it into a friend. Think of 
his having enabled you to call death itself your friend, that will do for 
you one grand act to emancipate you from all frailty and mortality, and 
sorrow and sin. Pray earnestly for an assured interest in that death 
which has so divinely transformed our otherwise dark and gloomy desti¬ 
ny. You cannot feel gratitude enough to the divine Benefactor for the 


364 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


inestimable advantage whicli your affliction, and the solemn anticipa¬ 
tions on which it has fixed your mind, have been made the means of 
imparting to you, in revealing to you how much you have needed of 
enlightening and sanctifying grace. It is well that your conscience has 
heen caused to speak to you in a sterner language, that you have been 
compelled to become sensible of corruption in the soul, that its pride 
has been shown to you in its true character, and that you are made to 
deplore that impatience which would complain even against God. This 
is a painful and mortifying manifestation to you, dear Sarah; but oh, it 
is most salutary and most indispensable. Do not turn from this self- 
abasing view. You feel you have a most direct interest in being aware 
of all that there is in a mind which is expecting and preparing to appear 
shortly in the divine presence; in being aware, especially, of all that 
requires to be at once changed and pardoned in order to an accepted and 
happy appearance there. Every deeper insight into our nature is sure 
to detect still more and more of w'hat ought to extinguish its pride, and 
excite the most fervent petitions for the operation of that almighty power 
which alone can renew this depraved nature, and for an interest in the 
merits of Him who “ had no sin.” A young person, wdth a conscience 
in a great measure free from the charge of the external practical kinds 
of sin, is extremely unapt to admit the conviction of a deep, sad, intrin¬ 
sic corruption in the soul. And I have no doubt, my dear friend, that it 
has been for the very purpose of aggravating your sense and conviction 
of this fact, that you have been made to experience a delay of that full con¬ 
solation, and that imparted spiritual strength, for which you have petitioned 
the divine mercy. You acknowledge that this actually has made you 
more sensible of pride, impatience, and the mighty difficulty of submis¬ 
sion and self-denial. Is it «iot w^ell that this internal evil has been 
thus disclosed to your knowledge and conscience ? Be thankful, dear 
Sarah, for this discipline of humiliation. And persevere to pray for 
both the pardon and the conquest of all sin, as a preparation for a world 
of purity and endless felicity; and while you do so, the whole truth of 
God is pledged to you that you will have the joy of final success. My 
ever dear young friend, in time and eternity, I remain yours with best 
regards and wishes, 

J. Foster. 


V. 

Monday, January 10, 1S25. 

Mv DEAR YOUNG Friend, —In seeing you last evening I could not 
help perceiving more evidently than in any former instance the painful 
oppression of your illness, though I w^as not entirely aware till after¬ 
wards how greatly it has been aggravated within the preceding week. 
After so considerable a space of time during which it had not appeared 
very decidedly progressive, this too visible change comes painfully on 



LETTERS. 


365 


your friends with an impression as of something new. Though they had 
habitually looked forward to one inevitable event, it had seemed possible 
that you might remain yet many days within reach of their affectionate 
attention. This I had myself been willing to anticipate when I wrote to 
you on the last day of the departed year. I hoped I might yet see you 
a considerable number of times more, though yet well aware that any 
time might prove the last. But now, dear Sarah, it does appear that the 
period appointed to you by Him, in whose merciful hands you are, is 
very near its termination. You can believe with what deep regret this 
cojiviction is admitted; but I hope that such regret is what you feel far 
less than any of your friends; and I confidently trust in the divine 
mercy that you have no cause to feel it. In this acceleration of the 
malady that preys on your life we regard you as happier than any of us, 
and happier than you have ever been yet, in being so near to a happi¬ 
ness that no pain or grief can ever invade. How soon our dear friend 
may be at the very “ fountain of life,” in possession of a joy which, if it 
could be but even in part revealed to those who survive, they would be 
impatient to pass through death to share with her ! And they will 
humbly hope in the same all-sufficient merits that she relies upon, that 
at length they shall arrive to share it with her. 

May the divine assistance be largely granted to you, dear Sarah, in 
this your time of most urgent need, to enable you to look forward to the 
approaching hour with a strong and overcoming faith—a faith that most 
simply and entirely relies on the complete atonement and the perfect 
righteousness of the Mediator. Implore the heavenly Father, as one of 
his children that has not many more prayers to address to him from this 
dark region of sin, and sorrow, and death, that he may enable you to go, 
as it were, out of himself, and repose your soul, with all its interests and 
hopes, on that perfect work of our Lord and Saviour. It is a complete 
salvation for you to rely upon, independent of any virtues, and in triumph 
over conscious and lamented sins in your own nature. It is expressly 
AS being unable to attain virtues and graces to satisfy the divine law 
and an enlightened conscience,—exactly as being conscious of defect 
and sin which you condemn and deplore,—it is in this very character 
and condition that you are to embrace the salvation accomplished through 
the sufterings of the Redeemer. And it comes to you in a divine ful¬ 
ness which'pardons all sin, and needs no virtues of your own for yo.ur 
acceptance before the righteous Judge. It sets aside at once all that 
you can attain, and all that you condemn, in yourself and of your own, 
and gives you a blessed acquittance on another ground. It makes no 
stipulation or previous condition for some certain established degrees of 
one virtuous principle or another in your soul. It tells you that all the 
degrees of all the virtues are equally incompetent and foreign to the 
o-reat purpose, and invites and conjures you to cast yourself wholly on 
Sie all-sufficiency of Him in whom all fulness of merit and righteous¬ 
ness dwells. It avowedly takes you as defective and sinful, notwith- 


366 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


standing all that you labor and strive, and says, “ Behold the Lamb of 
God that taketh away sin.” How constantly, through the New Testa¬ 
ment, is it represented that this committing of the soul to the merciful 
and exalted Saviour, as it is, with all its conscious w^eakness, inca¬ 
pacity, and self-condemnation, is the grand point of safety and immortal 
hope, is the escape from tlie oppression of guilt and the fear of death. 
Oh then, dear Sarah, do not exhaust your spirit, and afflict your heart, 
to attain, as it were, a self-commanded state of the mind, a subjugation 
of all its wrong tendencies and emotions to its own absolute authority, 
as a 'pre-requisite to the enjoyment of a sense of the divme mercy and ao- 
ceptance. I shall not be mistaken in this representation. It is most 
necessary and salutary to have a deep conviction of the evils of the 
heart, to l»ok at them, lament them, and strive against them. But then, 
it w^ere utter injustice to the design of the divine mercy in Jesus Christ 
for the applicant to that mercy to feel as if bound down to the melan¬ 
choly task, the desperate labor, of acquiring a conquest over those evils 
as a thing requisite in order to be qualified to appropriate that mercy, 
and all its blessed consolations. Oh no, my ever dear friend, come to 
that mercy first, and last,—always. Come to the divine Saviour jvs the 
subject of those evils, and seeking the pardon of them through his 
blood. They are the very reason for coming instantly and continually to 
him who died that the humble suppliant might obtain forgiveness of 
them, and the almighty operation of his grace to subdue them, as far as 
in this mortal state they may be subdued. Implore every hour, as the 
primary thing—as the supreme thing, that you may confide yourself 
wholly to the Saviour of the world, and then all the internal evils that 
you condemn and deplore will, as guilt, be totally and for ever detached 
from your soul, and, as harassing enemies, will be partly repressed before 
‘your final deliverance, and will be triumphantly escaped from in the 
mortal hour. And, my dear Sarah, will not that be a deliverance worth 
dying for ? When you shall have overcome, and shall be among those 
that “ have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the 
lyamb,” and shall “ be without fault before the throne of God,” shall you 
wish yourself back again in this mortal, sinful world ? 

There is one thing in which, upon the representation of your esti¬ 
mable relatives, I believe you really distress yourself greatly too much ; 
I mean the irritability wliich you complain of often feeling to a painful 
excess. You really must, my dear friend, be persuaded to believe that 
this is owing, in a very great degree, to the physical effect of your dis¬ 
order—an effect which probably no person would escape in similar cir¬ 
cumstances, and Tor which your merciful Father will have the most com¬ 
passionate indulgence. 

I wish extremely, dear Sarah, that in a communication so near the 
conclusion of our intercourse on earth, I could have found language to 
express to you the Christian consolations with more vivid and vital force 
and emphasis. But I pray, and do you, Sarah, continue to pray, that 


LETTERS. 


3G7 


your divine and almighty Friend may be your instructor and consoler— 
he who is the Father of spirits and the God of all consolation. 

If you would indulge me in a momentary reference to myself, I would 
say, that the endeavor, during your illness, to impart some instructive 
and consolatory suggestions to a young friend whom I have regarded 
with peculiar partiality from almost her childhood, has been one of the 
very most interesting employments of any in my whole life. And to the last 
day of it (which I now never think of as very remote), it will be a deeply 
cherished pleasure to hope I may have rendered you some real service 
in your most important interests, that, under the Divine blessing, I may 
have contributed some sensible aid to your looking with resignation and 
complacency on the mysterious, but most undoubtedly v/ise and benefi¬ 
cent, appointment which removes you so early from life ; beneficent it is, 
my dear Sarah, when it transfers you with but a moment’s interval to 
a better. Your mortal friend will cherish the thought of not being lost 
to your memory even when you shall have ascended to that nobler life. 
But I would hope that a little prolongation yet of your presence among 
us will permit the pleasure of seeing you some times more. My ever 
dear young friend, in time and eternity, may the Almighty bring us who 
are losing you, happily to meet you again, never more to lose your 
society. 

J. Foster. 


VI. 


Saturday, January Ibth. 

The last letter, my dear friend, was concluded under a pensive appre¬ 
hension that I might write no more lines to be read by you; it being 
written under the strong impression of the description given me, by your 
affectionate relatives, of the fast increasing pressure of your disease ; and 
of the severe crisis which you had suffered and with difficulty survived, 
from the attempt to take one more view of the face of nature, before you 
should be conveyed to behold a fairer aspect of existence elsewhere ; be¬ 
fore you should open the eyes tliat will never close upon the scenes of 
paradise. 

But as yet, and perhaps for a little while longer, you are retained 
within the relations of friendship on earth. They who have felt the 
value and attraction of the spirit that is preparing to leave them, will 
regard every protraction of your continuance here as a most welcome 
indulgence granted to them. But to you, my dear Sarah, it will be a 
suffering period. It is painful to think that you must experience a pro¬ 
gressive exhaustion of the strength already so reduced, that you will 
feel often an oppressive languor and restlessness from which there is 
no escape, that disordered nature will again and again struggle in the 
effort for life and breath, and that the power to command and fix your 



368 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


thoughts will often be suspended. But, reflect what it would be to suffer 
all this unalleviated by the consolations of piety, with no sweet radiance 
beaming on the soul from a better world, with'no sense of the presence 
and benignity of an almighty Friend, and with an insuppressible eager¬ 
ness to retain hold of departing life, in an alternation between transient 
delusive hopes of recovery, and returning despondency. Such an in¬ 
stance occurred a year or two since, in this neighborhood, in the case of 
a young person who was sinking under the same disease ; and her reli¬ 
gious friends thought they had never witnessed so sad a spectacle. 

It is, on the contrary, one of the most delightful illustrations of the 
preciousness and power of the Christian faith, that it can enable a young 
person, arrested in the full flush and animation of opening life by a fatal 
malady, to resign that life calmly to the will of the all-wise and gracious 
Disposer,—^to say with devout and grateful acquiescence, “ Thy will be 
done,”—to commend the soul to Him who died for us and rose again, 
and ever lives to intercede for us,—and to look beyond this world to the 
region of the true, and blessed, and expansive, and never-dying existence. 
Heaven grant you, in a happy measure, dear Sarah, these elevating sen¬ 
timents, growing stronger as your mortal frame grows weaker. May 
your heart feel this living power from the Eternal source of life—these 
principles of the soul’s true vitality, the precursors of the new and immortal 
life—to soothe and animate you through the remaining short period of 
your abode in a state of sickness and death. But still it must be a 
period of suffering for you, my ever dear friend. And it is you, you 
yourself, that bear the oppressive weight. Friends sympathize ; but are 
often reminded how far their sympathy is from an actual identity with 
the feelings of the sufferer. She bears alone the languor, and pain, and 
agitation of the falling tabernacle. I was most forcibly and pensively 
struck with this thought in seeing you last Tuesday, and still more 
deeply in reflection afterwards. I cannot express how afiectingly the 
idea dwelt on my mind, “ How soliiary a tiling is the fatal process !” 

The friends who are habitually near her, or who see her at consider¬ 
able intervals, are deeply interested in the suffering cff their young friend, 
but they are not as she is,—they cannot place themselves in perfect com¬ 
munity, cannot take a real share in that which presses on her,—cannot 
remove any part of it from her. It is her own individual self, still, that 
feels the sinking of nature, that breathes with labor, that is forced to 
painful efforts, by day and night, to relieve the vital orgajis. And it is 
in her own sole person that she is approaching to the last act of life. 

I have no doubt you will sometimes have had this consciousness of tlie 
solitariness, the ihcommunicableness, of your condition, distinctly sensible 
in your mind; the reflection that, whatever the persons attached to you 
may feel, and whatever they may do and express in kind endeavors of 
assistance, it is still you yourself that feel the grasp of the fatal power, 
from which no hand can withdraw you, and that you can hold, or be held 
by, no mortal hand in the act of stepping off, at last, from the world. In 


LETTERS. 


369 


the silence of your thoughts you have said, “ They regard my situation 
with an affectionate interest, but it is still / alone that am in the situation; 
it is I that am sinking in the painful struggle.” 

But, dearest Sarah, what then ? There is one all-vital relation, in 
which this secluded individuality and loneliness of your being and con¬ 
dition is absorbed and lost. The almighty and most benignant Being encom¬ 
passes you, is in perfect communication with your spirit, and all that 
your existence contains ; he pervades your mortal and your immortal 
nature ; maintains an inconceivably intimate intervention in it, an entire 
perception, and entire regulation of all that can affect it. He involves and 
cherishes you in his paternal love and power. It is in him that you live 
and move, that you breathe, or yield up your breath. It is in Him that 
you die—to live for ever. He is not a friend that, while near you, and 
affectionately intent on your situation, yet stands separate from you, as 
mortal friends must by an insuperable necessity of nature ; but essentially 
dwells in your^eart and soul, and in your body too, so long as he pleases 
to retain it the abode of your spirit. And when he shall dissolve that 
connection, his love will not abandon even the mortal part of his child, 
but will watch over it till the appointed hour, when he will recall it from 
the dust, in new life and never-fading glory. You are not, then, a deso¬ 
late and detached being, dissociated and alone, though mortal friends can¬ 
not be in perfect community with your condition, cannot sicken in your 
sickness, and expire in your dissolution. They too will, at a period 
which every day brings nearer, have each their own separate experience 
of the last conflict, and will hope to enjoy then that sense of the presence 
and communion of Him who is their life, which will preclude all feeling 
of solitariness and desolation. And in thinking of you, Sarah, at such 
a period, it will perhaps be more pleasing that you are gone before, and 
that they shall soon meet you, than it would have been to have left you 
behind, to follow at some unknown distance of time. 

This complacency, this predominance of sweet confidence and hope, 
accompanying the sense of so sublime and awful a reality as that of be¬ 
ing surrounded and pervaded by the Divine presence, in life and death, is 
derived to sinful beings solely through the mediation of Him who came 
on earth to bear our mortal nature, our infirmities, our sorrows, and our 
sins ; and offered up his life to reconcile us to God, whose offended justice 
was to be propitiated, that his mercy and love might flow into our otherwise 
unhappy and lost spirits. It is because our Great High Priest has made 
this one offering, “ sufficient and alone,” and has passed into the heavens 
to secure our immortal interests there, that we can have confidence in 
the favor of the Almighty Power, that we can come boldly to the throne 
of grace, as his children, pardoned, accepted, and smiled upon; and that, 
in our final hour, we can gratefully exult to feel that he is most inti¬ 
mately with us, that it is with him and in him, at his sovereign will and 
by his conducting and ever-protecting care, that we pass to a new, and 
as yet unrevealed state of existence. Let then, my dear Sarah, the 

VOL. II. 25 


370 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


special emphasis of your petitions to the throne of Heaven be directed 
to the point, that you may have a lively, affecting, and grateful appre¬ 
hension of the mercy of God as manifested through Jesus Christ, and 
be enabled to take to yourself more and more an interest in that mercy. 
Pray that all which your conscience feels as guilt you may be empower¬ 
ed to throw off from your soul upon the perfect merit and propitiation, 
there to be annihilated. It is an annihilation of guilt, that is, the con¬ 
demnation and the exposure to penal consequences are reversed and for 
ever done away, when all conscious sin is at once regretted, opposed, and 
with an humble, confiding effort of the soul transferred to that vast ac¬ 
count of human guilt which our Lord sustained and bore away in his 
death. That which he bore away, you, my dear Sarah, do not bear, as 
a condemning charge. You can plead to the Divine Justice this great 
sacrifice for sin; you can plead it noio; and will, I firmly trust, plead it 
with joyful success when you shall appear more immediately before the 
righteous judge. ^ 

This doctrine of our deliverance from condemnation, here and here¬ 
after, appears the most conspicuous character of the Christian Revelation. 
“ The Son of man came to give his life a ransom for many.” “ God 
has commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us.” “ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the 
law, being made a curse for us.” “ He hath loved us, and given himself 
for us.” “ There is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ 
Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.” “ By his own blood he en¬ 
tered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” 

The blood of Christ, who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered himself 
without spot to God, shall purge your conscience.” “ His own self bare 
our sins in his own body on the tree, by whose stripes we are healed.” 
“ He once suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might 
bring us to God.” “ He hath loved us, and sent his Son to be a propitia¬ 
tion for our sins.” “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works 
of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ; even we have believed in 
Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of him, and not by 
the works of the law; for by the works of the law shall no flesh be 
justified.” “ Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption 
that is in Jesus.” “By Christ all who believe are justified from all 
things.” “ He is the end of the law for righteousness to every one who 
believeth ; in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgive¬ 
ness of sins.” “ Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, 
through our Lord Jesus Christ.” There are numberless expressions to 
the same effect, and the general tenor of the New Testament is of the 
saiije character. There are persons who revolt at such a view of the 
foundation of all our hopes, and would say, “ Why might not the Al- 
mighty, of his mere hmmdiaie henevolence, pardon the offences of his frail 
creatures when they repent, without any such intermediation and vicari¬ 
ous suffering ?” It is enough to answer, that Supreme Wisdom was the 


LETTERS. 


371 


sole competent judge, in the universe, of what was the plan most worthy 
of holiness and goodness; and that, unless the New Testament be the 
most deceptive book that ever was written, the plan actually appointed is that 
of a sufiering mediator. If we could not apprehend the propriety of such an 
appointment for the exercise of mercy, that would be no valid objection. 
But, for myself, I never feel any difficulty in conceiving that, while the 
Divine mercy would save guilty beings from deserved punishment, it 
should yet be absolutely necessary to the honor of eternal justice that an 
awful infliction should fall somewhere; and that if a Being from heaven, 
divinely generous and beneficent, would offer himself to bear this infliction 
in place of the guilty, it would be the most worthy and illustrious ex¬ 
pedient possible for even Infinite Wisdom to adopt. 

I will conclude, my dear Sarah, with one consolatory suggestion. You 
may at some moment have felt a sentiment of regret that the shortness 
of the term assigned you in this life has denied you space for rendering 
an active and prolonged service to God. To repress the pain of such an 
emotion, consider, that the greater life will be an endless course of ac¬ 
tivity, and that that activity will be all service to God, and service in the 
most high and excellent nature and degree. In the figurative, emblem¬ 
atical representation of heaven, in the last chapter of the Bible, it is said, 
and assuredly without a figure, “ His servants shall serve him.” You 
have an infinite series of service to perform for him there, to enter on 
which 3 ^ou may be more than content to quit this lower, narrower field of 
action. Once again, my dear Sarah, I commend you to the Almighty 
Father and Benefactor. How much of his assistance will you need to 
support your patience and fortitude under the increasing weakness and 
weariness of ebbing life! May he impart to you the animating sense 
of his favor, and the still brightening hope of a happier world. May 
you enter, at length, into the fulness of his joy. And may I one day 
meet you there. I would repeat the words of a great poet, in a vale¬ 
dictory address to his friend :— 

“ May’st thou shine when the sun is quenched; 

May’st thou live and triumph when time expires.” 

My dear young friend, in time and throughout eternity, I repeat once 
more, may the blessing of Heaven rest on you. J. Foster. 


VH. 

Thursday, January 27. 

It is extremely pleasing, my dear friend, to see your period of ap¬ 
pointed discipline so much prolonged, and to think of you as still the 
hearer or the reader of the expressions of friendship. If I would once 
again repeat such expressions to you, it is rather as a continued gratifi¬ 
cation of that interest with which I have done it so often before, than 



372 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


from feeling myself able to communicate anything very sensibly varied, 
or more appropriate to the situation in which you stand, looking forward 
upon so grand and solemn a prospect. 

The conversation of last week has returned on my thoughts number¬ 
less times. I was gratified more than I can express by the friendly con¬ 
fidence shown in speaking so unreservedly of yourself, and of some of 
the sentiments and solicitudes which your mind revolves in its internal 
consciousness.—If you have habitually felt a difficulty of being commu¬ 
nicative on such a subject, it is to me nothing strange in the least. The 
case was so with myself, in youth, and has always continued so; I mean, 
a strong, very strong, and invincible disinclination to bring into social 
converse, with even the most assured and faithful friend, the religious 
state of my own mind. The feeling always was,—“ That concern is 
peculiarly and emphatically my own; I think of it much and deeply, feel 
its vast importance, but cannot make it a subject of free communication. 
—There is the utmost difference of mental temperaments in this respect. 
Some persons seem to feel a restless prompting to disclose all their 
thoughts and emotions; and when they see a quite opposite disposition 
they are apt unjustly to interpret it as an unfavorable indication. Your 
mind, my dear Sarah, is probably of the order more inclined to keep the 
deeper reflections and emotions secluded within ; and it is not a required 
effect or evidence of religion, that it should reverse this constitution of 
the mind. Only you will permit me to observe, that whenever you do, 
with perhaps a degree of effort against the retiring propensity of your 
feelings, give expression to any of the deeper sentiments in your mind, 
at occasional favorable moments, you impart the liveliest interest to your 
affectionate domestic friends. They watch with habitual solicitude for 
every intimation of that internal progress, the happy result of which is 
to be their best consolation when they shall see you among them no 
longer. They entertain a grateful assurance that all will be well, eter¬ 
nally well; but every expression, however brief, which confirms to them 
that this is also your own assurance, your own good hope, reposing on 
the divine mercy, is most welcome and valuable to them. 

My ever dear young friend, you have attained one happy and enviable 
point of advancement. I was exceedingly struck with the calmness 
with which you deliberately said, “ I would not wish to recover, even 
if that were possible.” If I was somewhat surprised to hear so young a 
person say, that this was not so much of an attainment, for that you had 
never been very ardently attached to life, I did not regard you as the less 
to be congratulated. It was well that there should have been, in your 
season of health, a slighter degree of the fascination to life than is felt 
by youth in general. But, my dear Sarah, it is an immensely different 
thing to be able to avow this detachment where life is actually and sen¬ 
sibly approaching its termination. It is a high and felicitous attainment 
beyond what that former indifference would have proved to be if it had 
been suddenly brought to trial. And what is that to which you are coii.- 


LETTERS. 


373 


scions that you owe so great, so enviable an attainment ? Is it not that 
you are enabled to yield yourself resignedly to your Creator’s will, with 
a full conviction that what he wills is the best ? Is it not that you be¬ 
hold in the great Mediator an all-sufficiency for the pardon of all your 
guilt, for acceptance before God, and “ deliverance from the wrath to 
come,” and that you are solemnly desiring and praying, and with a sweet 
hope of entire success, to be enabled to commit your soul to him ? Is it 
not that there is granted you the hope of a happier and eternal life when 
this mortal one shall be resigned,—a hope which breathes peace, though 
it do not glow with the delight and triumph which you could desire ? Is 
it not, my dear friend, through the efficacy of these divine resources that 
you can maintain a decided willingness to surrender all on earth, and are 
waiting to hear the voice of Him who has the keys of death and the in¬ 
visible world ?” My dear Sarah, be thankful for even the imperfect and 
partial efficacy of these “ powers of the world to comeand pray in 
patient faith for a continual augmentation of their sacred influence. For 
there is no point of necessarij limitation in the measure in which the effi¬ 
cacious power of Christianity may be experienced, both in its consolatory 
and animating operation, and in its corrective one. In the divine revela¬ 
tion there is no one character that you are more certain that you perceive 
than a spirit of promise —a continual and often emphatic repetition of as¬ 
surance, that those who sincerely seek to obtain from God more of the 
best wisdom, of internal spiritual power, of the consolations of hope, shall 
obtain it. But, at the same time. He who has thus engaged to impart 
the most inestimable gifts that can be received under heaven, justly main¬ 
tains his own sovereign discretion with respect to the gradation and the 
time in which they shall be communicated; with respect to the measure 
of disciplinary and painful exercise which his servants shall ])ass through 
in the progress of attaining them. And think, dear Sarah, how justly he 
may require an humble patience, a prolonged, persevering earnestness, 
when all the blessings to be granted are the gifts of sovereign mercy 
alone—when he has already given so much—and when it is absolutelii 
certain that he will, in the whole of his dispensation, taken together, first 
and last, toward his persevering petitioner, impart all that is indispensa¬ 
ble to final safety and victory. 

You complain, my dear friend, of the imperfect degree, the slow pro¬ 
gress, of the operation of the religious principle on your mind. But 
should you be surprised at this ? Should you wonder that you have not 
been suddenly or rapidly placed in a state of full conquest over every 
internal evil, on a serene*eminence above all painful strife and disquiet 
of conscience ? Reflect what there was to be done for you, and in you. 
Consider what it was to be suddenly arrested in the prime of youth, with 
the world opening before you, and by its influences taking possession 
of your spirit, and operating to assimilate its affections. And perhaps 
the solemn truths and warnings of religion, though familiar to your know¬ 
ledge, had a feebleness of power over your heart which you may now 


374 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


sometimes reflect upon with regret, and not without wonder. In the 
very midst of this introduction to the world, and under the influence of. 
its interests and prospects, there was suddenly laid on you an irresistible 
hand; all this combination of sublunary interests was dissolved from 
around you, and the vision of eternity arose to your view. Under so 
mighty a change of your situation, think, dear Sarah, whether there was 
not that to be accomplished in your mind which might well require a 
hard and protracted process. Should you wonder that it is still not com¬ 
pleted, and still accompanied, in a degree, by difficulty and grievance ? 
Can you wonder that there are still some tendencies very imperfectly 
subdued, some mortifying perceptions of a corrupt nature forced upon 
your consciousness, a faintness to be lamented in the best desires, a 
slowly progressive ascendency of the Christian spirit ? All this has been 
necessary for you to feel, dear Sarah, and some remainder of the same 
discipline may not yet be passed. But maintain patience, continue to 
apply to the power and mercy of the Almighty, in the name of our Lord, 
and all will ultimately be well. What a region that will be when there 
will be no more contest with sin, no more sickness, nor fear, nor sorrow. 

Once more, my dear young friend, in time and through eternity, I 
invoke the Divine benediction on you. J. Foster. 


VIII. 


February Ath, 1825. 

My dear Sarah, —While your heavenly Father retains you here 
some lingering moments longer, to accomplish in you and for you the 
concluding part of his merciful intentions toward you on earth, I can¬ 
not be content without conveying to you one short expression more of 
that most deep and friendly interest which augments as w’e see you re¬ 
tiring. I wish to have it reposed and cherished in my memory, that so 
dear a friend may read yet a few more lines from me. And I should 
feel it an inestimable favor granted to me, if I might contribute, in even 
the least degree, under the blessing of him who keeps you in his faith¬ 
ful care, to cheer your spirit in this last stage of its journey and its con¬ 
flict. All mortal endeavors to aid are felt, by those whose affection 
would offer them, to be inexpressibly feeble and inadequate to impart 
strength and animation to the soul in this season of its final and greatest 
trial. But the happiness to you, dearest Sarah, and the consolation to 
your friends, is, that he is with you who has all power and goodness to 
support you, who loves while he afflicts you, and will not desert you one 
moment, but hold you in his own mighty hand, and bear you safely 
through. 

You are sensible, my ever dear friend, that the painful struggle of 
life will soon be over. At the end of each of the few past weeks you 
have been conscious, and your anxiously vigilant domestic friends have 



LETTERS. 


37.5 


plainly perceived, that a few days had effected still another, and another, 
depression of the force of the vital principle : languishing nature has 
surrendered, successively, still one point more. You are now touching 
the very coniine between this world and that mysterious one into which 
your Almighty Father’s voice is calling you, into which his angels will 
rejoice to bear you. Oh, how happy that you are not looking despond- 
ingly back, with grief and anguish, to see the world receding, and vainly 
striving to grasp something by which to retain hold of it! How happy 
to feel, that the world you are leaving does not raise a distracting and 
melancholy conflict in your soul by drawing it back from that to which 
you are advancing. What a felicity, that you can complacently, and 
without a murmur, without, at least, anything more than a momentary 
and natural emotion, resign the world, and youth, and life, with all the 
sublunary activities of a vigorous and enlarging mind, and all that time 
appeared to be promising you; and can give your immortal being up to 
Him who will translate it to a better and happier economy. 

But still, my dear ISarah, you feel a disquietude of heart, from not ex¬ 
periencing the complete influence of religion in imparting a fulness of 
consolation, in animating the affections toward God and eternal realities, 
and raising you to a strong confidence of faith. Y"ou are, perhaps, 
sometimes tempted to doubt whether your prayers to the throne of 
lieaven have been accepted. Now, it is right that you should regret a 
deficiency of the blessed influence, that you should implore that God 
would lift up upon you, without a cloud, the light of his countenance, 
and grant you, at happy intervals at least, to enjoy strong consolation in 
having fled to the refuge set before you,— at internals, for a malady that 
so crushes the body will often, unless almost a miracle were wrought, 
inevitably cast a shade over the mind. A measure of this joy of faith 
and hope is truly a blessing to be desired and implored, both for your 
own support, my dear Sarah, and that you may leave a happy testimony 
for the consolation of your friends. Y^ou will please your heavenly 
Father by praying that he would make it delightfully evident that youi’ 
prayers have been graciously heard. But, at the same time, do not de¬ 
prive yourself of the precious consolation which belongs to you, and 
which is so exceedingly needful to you, by mistaking the true principle 
of the assurance of the efficacy of your prayers. The true ground of 
this assurance is the infallible certainty of the divine promises; that is 
to say, the certainty of the faithfulness of God to perform them to those 
who truly seek him. Combine this certainty on the part of God, with 
the conscious certainty on your part, my dear friend, that you do sin¬ 
cerely, earnestly, and patiently, continue to entreat him to fulfil his own 
gracious words to you, and this forms a firm ground for your assurance, 
independently of the degree in which he may or may not favor you with the 
express tokens that he actually does accept your petitions. If only satisfied 
of this one thing, namely, that the soul has with real and persevering 
earnestness, and in the name of Christ, sought the divine mercy, and 


376 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


implored the final fulfilment of the promises of God, I should feel an en¬ 
tire confidence of the eternal safety of such a spirit, however defective 
its actual consolations were, and even though it went on to the last hour 
with a great degree of painful doubt and apprehension. Desirable as 
it is,—exceedingly so, in your near approach to the mighty change,—to 
enjoy the most sensible and animating manifestation of the divine favor 
and acceptance in Jesus Christ, I would still repeat, rnost cogently, that 
this is not the essential ground for confidence. The essential ground 
still is, the absolute certainty that God will and does accept every one 
who sincerely seeks him, whether he grant an animating testimony to the 
heart that he does so or not. 

And are you not consciously certain, that you have sought his mercy 
with a real and solemn intentness of soul, and that you do so still, and 
that you shall continue to do so to the last hour ? My dearest Sarah, 
surely your heart bears you witness that this is true. His favor, his 
love, in life and death, and for ever, is that which you are never ceasing 
to desire and supplicate. You even desire and pray that you may desire 
and pray for it still more importunately. You are beseeching him to 
fulfil in you all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith 
with power, to conform you to his image, and to prepare you for his 
presence. Surely, my ever dear friend, you can say that this is the 
prevailing impulse of your soul; that it is so in those moments when 
the sufferings which oppress the body are at intervals so remitted as to 
allow the free action of your mind. Then, be assured, that you have 
the true and solid ground for confidence. Rest upon it, Sarah ; in 
humble trust commit yourself to the divine mercy; still, however, not 
ceasing to pray that your God may impart to you a more animated de¬ 
gree of consolation, more clearly disclose his love, and more powerfully 
draw your affections toward him. Do not cease to pray for some such 
happy emotions, in the intervals of your suffering. But still consider, 
that one part, a difficult part, of your last duty, is devoutly to submit to 
bear that weariness and often confusion of mind which is the inevitable 
effect of the distress and sinking of your physical nature. May your 
almighty Friend sustain you and prolong your patience under this 
painful weight! 

But, while I write, the thought rises upon me, like the appearance of 
a vision, how soon you will be past all those disquietudes and suffer¬ 
ings ! A short while, and you will have emerged from the valley of the 
shadow of death, into the scene of glory and felicity beyond. Go, dear¬ 
est Sarah ; go before, and expect us, that are losing you, ere long to fol¬ 
low you. It will give an added attraction to a better world, to think that 
you are there. 

Once more, my ever dear young friend, in time and through eternity, 
may the blessing of the Almighty rest on you. 


J. F. 


LETTERS. 


377 


IX. 


Saturday JVight. 

I AM wishing, my dear Sa rah, to add a very few lines merely as a post¬ 
script to the letter sent this morning. It was concluded somewhat more 
briefly than I wished, for fear of being too late for the expected means of 
conveyance. Reflection suggests that there should have been an observ¬ 
ation or two more precisely directed to one particular view of that defi¬ 
ciency of consolation which has so much shaded and disquieted your 
spirit. \our expressions to me, and the observations made by your 
aftectionate relatives, appear to convey that the chief point of your dissa¬ 
tisfaction is this —that your eflbrts and prayers have had but a partial 
success towards subduing and expelling what your conscience condemns 
in the habit of your mind, and in its occasional emotions and excitements. 
You are discouraged by feeling so much irritability accompanying the 
aggravated pressure of your disease, and by the consciousness of too 
little warmth of the religious aftections, too little of the devotional sen¬ 
timent toward the object worthy of infinite love, too little of the going 
forth of the soul in the lively apprehension, by faith, of invisible re¬ 
alities. 

Now, my dearest Sarah, supposing all this to be the fact, even to the 
utmost degree that you at any moment painfully apprehend, there is still 
but one and the same resource— an application to the infinite mercy and 
power of God. All this, being just so much manifestation to you of what 
you cannot effect by your own will and strength, becomes but the more 
urgent a motive to persist in unremitted entreaty for both pardoning 
and sanctifying grace from heaven. The conscious continuance of the 
evil but imposes a still more resolved and earnest perseverance in appli¬ 
cation to the renewing and transforming spirit; and it is a trial of your 
faith in the all-sufficiency, the willingness, and the fidelity to promises, of 
that blessed flower. May that faith be sustained in strength to animate 
your application to God for his gracious influences upon you, even to the 
last hour that you shall remain on this side that glorious kingdom where 
faith is changed to sight. 

My dear friend, in attempting to suggest consolatory thoughts, I 
would by no means adopt a language which should seem to make light of 
those conscious deficiencies of the due operation of religion on your 
mind, which have caused you so much pain, and sometimes cast a gloom 
over your hopes. But as to one of these—I mean the tendency to irri¬ 
table feelings —I cannot but be fully of the opinion of your domestic 
friends, that you suffer it to distress your conscience very greatly too 
much. Not that you should consider it as no evil, or not an evil to be 
endeavored and prayed against, but it is an evil so essentially physical, it 
arises so immediately and almost wholly from the morbid, exhausted, and 
harassed state of your body, that assuredly you may safely regard it as a 
comparatively very small matter of accountableness to your conscience and 


378 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


your merciful Judge, who knows and compassionates our frame, and re¬ 
members that, as to our mortal nature, we are but dust. I am persuaded 
that the most exalted piety would in such a physical state be no security 
against, not only the tendency to sucli feelings, but their actual excite- 
njcnt and recurrence in a considerable degree. Such piety will strive 
against them, will re'gret them when they have prevailed, but cannot con¬ 
stitute an exemption from a mighty law of our feeble nature, which 
makes the soul so much a partaker and victim of the sufferings of the 
Ixxiy. The imperfect power, or rather the experienced impracticability, of 
repressing these irritations, with which the oppressed frame affects the 
mind, is a much less serious evil, and far less to be regretted, than a great 
deficiency of those feelings which are the great essential elements of in¬ 
ternal religion—love to God, an earnest, grateful direction of the soul to 
Jesus Christ as the beneficent Saviour, the only medium of pardon and 
acceptance, and a solemn stretching forth of the thouglits and affections 
to the grand interest and scenes of the eternal world. Whatever defect 
you liave been sensible of in these grand primary principles you will most 
iustly have lamented, and may still regard with much deeper regret than 
that occasional irritable temperament which is mainly attributable to 
mere physical disorder, and which, my dear Sarah, you have, to all of us, 
appeared to regard with a greatly disproportionate measure of self-con¬ 
demnation. The solicitous desire of your pious relatives has been that 
you might less expend your regrets on this, and feel them more directed 
to the imperfection which you were sensible of in the greater points of 
the Christian character. 

So long, my dear friend, as you continue a subject of mortality, and oi 
the discipline of your heavenly Father to prepare you to leave it, let your 
chief solicitude, and most importunate prayer, be directed to the object of 
attaining, through the agency of the almighty Spirit, more of the love of 
God shed abroad in your heart, a more aifecting sense of the mercy of 
God in Jesus Christ, a more full and cordial reliance on the efficacy of 
the Saviour’s mediation, and a more commanding impression on your 
mind of those stupendous realities which you are so very nearly ap¬ 
proaching to behold. Oh, how striking to think, dearest Sarah, what a 
very, very short time hence you will be in the midst of their unveiled 
magnificence, and inspired, I trust, with heavenly rapture to find your¬ 
self there! 

While you regret, and justly, every conscious deficiency of the great 
essential affections of religion, and the painful slowness of your advance¬ 
ment in them, you have still no cause to be discouraged. The vital 
principle of safety and hope is, that you would be all that God approves; 
that you dej)lore every conscious deficiency in your soul; that you con¬ 
tinue to supplicate the favor, the help, the blessed influences, of the God 
of all grace ; that you strive to cast your soul wholly on the merits of 
Christ; that you desire and pray to be conformed to the divine image; 
that you earnestly long for all that constitutes a preparation for eternity. 


LETTERS. 


379 


Who, my dear Sarah, could have wrought all this in you but God ? And 
he is certain to perfect his own work. But consider, that it is neve?' 
perfected on earth; you are not to expect that it will [be]. To the very last 
we are sinners, who have nothing to rely upon but the divine mercy 
alone. Do not think of making yourself loorthy of that mercy^ in crder to 
be entitled to rely upon it, and appropriate its consolations. With every 
imperfection, with every mortifying conviction of your inability to sub¬ 
due your whole soul to God, give it him as it is. He will accept it, will 
train it to the last point of his own wise discipline, will ensure its 
having, in this introductory stage, the essen/taZ principle of its fitness for 
his presence, and in that presence will exalt and refine it to the perfec¬ 
tion of purity and joy. Once again, my ever dear young friend,—my 
friend in time and through eternity—I commend you to his infinite power 
and mercy. 

J. . 


CORRECTION. 

VoL. I., p. 12, ideas to reverberate." This expression was probably suggested by a pas¬ 
sage in Young, whose “ Night Thoughts” he elsewhere terms “ the most impressive moral 
poetrj' in existence.” 

“ Full on ourselves descending in a line. 

Pleasure’s bright beam is feeble in delight; 

Delight intense is taken by rebound ; 

Reverberated pleasures fire the breast 


Night 3. 


LIST OF MR. FOSTER’S CONTRIBUTIONS 


TO THE 


ECLECTIC REVIEW- 


[* * The Articles marked with a t have been reprinted in the “ Contributions,’" edited by 
Dr. Price. 2 vois., 8vo. 1844.] 


1806. 

1 .f Carr’s Stranger in Ireland. November and December. 

1807. 

2. f Forbes’s Life of Beattie. January and February, 

3. Thoughts on Affectation. February. 

4. Ensor’s Independent Man. Ayril and May. 

5. Gambier on Moral Evidence. May. 

6. Fawcett’s Hints on Education. May. 

7. Janson’s Stranger in America. June. 

8. f Memoirs of Lord Karnes. July and August. 

9. Collyer’s Lectures on Scripture Facts. October. 

10. Carr’s Tour through Holland. November. 

11. f Blair’s Life. December. 

12. Grant’s Letters from the Mountains. December. 

13. Hibernian Society’s Report. December. 

1808. 

14. f Ritchie’s Life of Hume. January. 

15. Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney. February. 

16. f Vindication of the Hindoos. March. 

17. f Pamphlets on India. Alay. 

18. Stockdale on Poets. Alay. 

19. Edwards’s Narrative. June. 

20. Cordiner’s Ceylon. July and August. 

21. f Fox’s Historical Work. September. 

22. f Macdiarmid’s British Statesmen. October and November. 

23. f Life of Sir Thomas More. December. 




CONTRIBUTIONS. 


381 


24. Midas. December. 

25. f Cunningham on Christianity in India. December. 

1809. 

26. f Paley’s Sermons. January. 

27. Gass’s Expedition. February. 

28. Buchanan Prize Sermons. February and March. 

29. Memoirs of an American Lady. February. 

30. f Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid. March. 

31. Carr’s Caledonian Sketches. April. 

32. Account of Jamaica. April. 

33. f Thomas’s Letters on the Church, and a Layman’s 

34. f Answer. April. 

35. f Scott Waring’s Pamphlet. May. 

36. f Sydney Smith’s Sermons. May and June. 

37. f Meadley’s Life of Paley. June. 

38. f Rose on Fox’s History. July. 

39. Lord Valentia’s Travels. August, September, October. 

40. Ancient Indian Literature. September. 

41. Walker’s Essays. October. 

42. f Plumptre’s Discourses on the Stage. November. 

43. Lewis and Clarke’s Travels. November. 

44. f Chatfield’s Historical Review of Hindostan. December. 

45. f Characters of Fox. December. 

46. Erskine’s Speech on Cruelty to Animals. December. 

1810. 

47. f Edgeworth’s Essays on Professional Education. January and 

February. 

48. f Pearson on Propagating Christianity in Asia. February. 

49. Tennant’s Indian Recreations. March. 

50. Robinson’s More’s Utopia. April. 

51. f Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Biography. May. 

52. Aikin’s Life of Huet. June. 

53. Semple’s Journey through Spain. June. 

54. Report of the African Institution. July. 

55. Clarke’s Travels, Part I. August. 

56. f Ramayuna, Vol. I. September. 

57. f Edgeworth’s Tales. October. 

58. f Windham’s Speech on Cruelty to Animals. November. 

59. f Cottle’s Fall of Cambria. December. 

1811. 

60. Travels of Abu Taleb. January. 

61 . Bourdon’s Materials for Thinking. Jinuary. 


382 


LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 


62. Collyer’s Lecture on Prophecy. Februanj. 

63. f Southey’s Curse of Kehama. March and April. 

64. Pike’s Travels in North America. April. 

65. Kirkpatrick’s Nepaul. Maxj and June. 

66. Dudley’s Metamorphosis of Sona. May. 

67. Von Sack’s Voyage to Surinam. June. 

68. f Buchanan’s Christian Researches. July and August. 

69. f Kirkpatrick’s Letters of Tippoo Sultan. July. 

70. Hyatt’s Sermons. July. 

71. Carr’s Travels in Spain. August and September. 

72. Foot’s Life of Murphy. September. 

73. f Coleridge’s Friend. October. 

74. Ramayuna, Vol. II. November. 

75. Report of the African Institution. November. 

76. Hervey’s Letters. November. 

77. f Hey wood’s Vindication of Fox’s History. Dece7nber. 

1812. 

78. Morier’s Journey through Persia, February and March. 

79. f Grant’s Superstitions of the Highlanders. February. 

80. f Aikin’s Lives of Selden and Usher. February. 

81. f Moor’s Hindu Infanticide. April. 

82. f Elgin’s Pursuits in Greece. April. 

83. Chandler’s Life of Waynflete. April. 

84. f Jesse’s Sermons. April. 

85. Foote’s Vindication. May. 

86. Plumtre’s Narrative. May. 

87. Gaisford’s Essay on the Slave Trade. May. 

88. Whitaker’s Life of Radcliffe. May. 

89. Wilmot’s Life of Hough. May. 

90. Hooker’s Tour through Iceland. June. 

91. Semple’s Sketch of the Caraccas. July. 

92. Biographic Moderne. July. 

93. f Mudford’s Life of Cumberland. August. 

94. f Chateaubriand’s Martyrs. September. 

95. Drake’s Gleaner. November. 

96. Gunn’s Sermons. November. 

97. f Whitefield’s Life. December. 

98. Description of Terracottas. December. 

1813. 

99. f Woodfall’s Junius. February and April. 

100. f Grattan’s Speeches. February. 

101. f Pilgrimage of Theophilus. March. 

102. f Hall’s Address on the East India Charter. April. 


CONTRIBUTIONS. 


388 


103. Calamities of Authors. May. 

104. Zollikofer’s Sermons. May. 

105. |- Galt’s Life of Wolsey. June. 

106. Chateaubriand’s Beauties of Christianity. July. 

107. Stoddard’s Louisiana. August. 

108. Gamble’s View of Ireland. September. 

109. f Stephens’s Memoirs of Horne Tooke. September and October. 

110. Forsyth’s Remarks on Italy. November. 

1814. 

111. Stanfield’s Biography. February. , 

112. Bodleian Letters. February. 

113. Semple’s Tour to Hamburgh. February. 

114. f A New Directory for Nonconformist Churches. March. 

115. Dyer’s Poetics. April. 

116. f Philosophy of Nature. Alay. 

117. Evans’s Ponderer. Alay. 

118. Wilberforce on India. May. 

119. Krusenstern’s Voyage round the World. June. 

120. Memoirs of a Celebrated Character. September. ^ 

121. Life of Cardinal Ximenes. October. 

122. Penn’s Bioscope. October. 

123. Forbes’s Oriental Memoirs. October, November, December. 

124. Dyer’s Cambridge. November. 

126. Memoir of the Queen of Etruria. December. 

1815. 

126. t Butler’s Life of I’Hopital. February. 

127. Ramond’s Travels in the Pyrenees. February. 

128. Salt’s Travels in Abyssinia. March and April. 

129. Eighth Report of the African Institution. March. 

130. Wathen’s Voyage to Madras, May. 

131. Alpine Sketches. June. 

132. Lamotte’s Travels in Norway. July. 

133. Campbell’s Travels in Africa. August. 

134. Park’s Mission to the Interior of Africa. September. 

135. Dodworth’s See of Salisbury. November. 

136. Hobhouse’s Journey through Albania. December, ^ 

1816. 

137. Lewis and Clarke’s Travels in America. February. 

138. f Curran’s Speeches. February. 

139. Klaproth’s Travels in Caucasus. April. 

140. Britton’s Cathedral Antiquities. May. 

141. Travels of Ali Bey. June. 


384 LIFE OF JOHN FOSTER. 

142. Clarke’s Travels. July and September. 

143. Description of Ancient Marbles. July. 

144. Hoare’s South Wiltshire. August. 

145. Adam’s Narrative. September. ' 

146. Memoirs of Madame De La Rochejaquelein. November. 

147. Daniell’s Oriental Scenery. November. 

148. Parkyn’s Monastic Remains. December. 

149. Denon’s Egypt. December. 

1817. 

150. Galt’s Life of West. January. 

151. Memoirs of Four Hindoos. January. 

152. Roster’s Travels. February. 

153. f Jeremy Taylor’s Contemplations. February. 

154. Legh’s Travels in Egypt. Alarch. 

155. Sketches of India. April. 

156. Holland’s Travels. April. 

157. ' Johns on the Burning of Widows. May. 

158. Antiquities of Attica. May. 

159. f Chalmers’s Astronomical Discourses. September^ October, and 

November. 

1818. 

160. f Ryland’s Life of Fuller. February. 

161. Daniell’s Voyage round Great Britain. April and May. 

162. f Franklin’s Correspondence. May. 

163. Henderson’s Iceland. July, August, zrxdi September. 

164. Memoirs of Fawcett, jun. August. 

165. Walter Scott’s Border Antiquities. October. 

166. Congo Expedition. November. 

1819. 

167. Flinders’s Terra Australis. April. 

168. Clarke’s Travels. June. 

169. Rhodes’s Peak Scenery. June. 

170. Fitzclarence’s Journal. July. 

171. f Dr. Fawcett’s Life. August. 

172. Wild’s Lincoln Cathedral. August. 

173. Egede’s Greenland. August. 

174. Hamilton’s Nepaul. September. 

1820. 

175. Allason’s Antiquities of Pola., January. 

176. Baron Von Gerning’s Tour along the Rhine. July. 


CONTRIBUTIONS. 


385 


177. Raffles’s Java. August. 

178. Gell’s Pompeiana. September. 

1828. 

179. f Ryland’s Pastoral Memorials. December. 

1837. 

180. f Cottle’s Coleridge. August. 

181. f Lane’s Egyptians. October. 

1838. 

182. f Dix’s Life of Chatterton. May. 

183. Turner’s Description of England and Wales. June. 

184. What Cheer ? or Roger Williams in Banishment. July. 

1839. 

185. Polack’s New Zealand. July. 

JVote. —The scientific observations in the review of Walker's Essays y 
No. 41, were not written by Mr. Foster, but (if the Editor has not 
been misinformed) by Dr. 0, Gregory. 


VOL. II. 


20 


A. 


INDEX. ^ 


Anderson, Rev. W. ii. 53, 124, 
138, 139, 155. 

Arnold, Dr. i. 8 ; ii. 110, 251. 

“ Autumn Dream,” Mr. Sheppard’s, 
ii. 240. 

B. 

Ballot, ii. 178, 187, 252. 

Baxter, i. 211, 287; ii. 34, 41. 
Beattie, Dr. i. 221. 

Bible Society, i. 116 ; ii. 2. 
Bolingbroke, i. 207. 

British Review, ii. 22. 

Brougham, ii. 43, 77. 

Brucker, ii. 153. 

Buchanan, G. i. 133. 

Buonaparte, i. 142, 284. 

Burke, i. 118, 129. 

C. 

Canning, ii. 83, 100. 

Carey, Dr. ii. 104, 105, 177. 
Carpenter, Dr. ii 142, 157. 
Catholic Emancipation, ii. 72, 84, 
100 . 

Chalmers, Dr. ii. 16, 121. 

Chartists, ii. 202, 224, 225. 
Chatham, Lord, i. 141. 

Chronicle, Morning, ii. 194, 197, 
302. 

Church Establishment, i.240 ; ii.6, 
74, 151, 163, 192, 248, 300. 
Church Rates, ii. 252. 

Clergy, Non-resident, ii. 146. 

Evangelical, i. 249; ii.7,175,293. 
Cobbett, i. 262, 273, 283. 


Coleridge, i. 93, 148, 226, 228, 229 
269, 274, 290; ii. 275, 321. 

Coles, Rev. T. i. 93 ; ii. 221. 

Commons, House of, ii. 77, 182, 
208. 

Conference, Methodist, ii. 92. 

Constitution, English, ii. 74, 127. 

Crabbe, i. 273. 

Curran, i. 189. 

D. 

Durfee, Judge, ii. 212. 

Dryden, ii. 23. 

E. 

Eclectic Review, i. 184, 246; ii 
144. 

Edinburgh Review, i. 224, 225, 259. 

Education, National, ii. 5, 226,245. 

Education, Self, i. 139, 197. 

Edwards, Jonathan, i. 56. 

F. 

Fawcett, Dr. i. 6, 50; ii. 252. 

Fawcett, Rev. John, i. 209 ; ii. 145, 

210 . 

Foster, John, Birth and boyhood, 
i. 2. Juvenile characteristics, 
3-5. Baptism and removal to 
Brearley Hall, 6. To Bristol, 8. 
Visits Newcastle-on-Tyne, 22. 
Dublin, 24. Return to Yorkshire, 
31. Opinions on ecclesiastical 
and political irffetitutions, 41-44. 
Removal to Chichester, 45. Vi¬ 
sits Battersea, 46. Settles at' 
Downend, 48. Visits Yorkshire, 



INDEX. 


387 


49. Literary projects. Essay on 
the Greatness of man, 101. 
Journal, lOS. Letters on the 
Metropolis, 156-175. Removal 
to Frome, 176. Publication of 
the Essays, 178. Resigns the 
pastorship at Frome, 187. Be¬ 
comes a stated contributor to the 
Eclectic Review, ISS. Marriage 
and settlement at Bourton, 242. 
Engages in village preaching, 
248. Birth of liis son, 249. 
Death of his parents, 252. Do¬ 
mestic habits, 252-255. Removal 
to Downend, 257. Discourse on 
missions. Essay on the evils of 
Popular Ignorance, ii. 3. Lec¬ 
tures, 9. Essay to Doddridge's 
Rise and Progress of Religion, 11. 
Son’s illness and death, 13-15. 
Introductory observations to Dr. 
Marshman’s statement, 66. Ob¬ 
servations on Mr. Hall as a 
preacher, 71. Sanguine expec¬ 
tations from the Reform Bill, 77. 
Illness and death of Mrs Foster, 
129. Decease of Mr. Anderson, 
138. Mr. Hughes, 141. Final 
revision of the Essays. Letters 
on the Church and the Ballot, 
144. Decease of his brother and 
Mr. Fawcett, 145. Visit to Bour¬ 
ton, 219. Death of Mr. Coles, 
221. Visit to London, 222 At¬ 
tack of bronchitis, 222. Last 
visit to Bourton, 223. Final ill¬ 
ness, 226. Death, 232. 

Fox, i. 205, 259, 266. 

G. 

Gibbon,!. 201,211. 

Gisborne, ii. 243. 

Grattan, i. 189 ; ii. 123. 

Greaves, Mr. ii. 215. 

H. 


176, 1S3, 187, 199, 205, 244,251, 
257, 266, 273, 274, 279, 306 ; ii. 
11, 51, 54, 70, 92, 97, 119, 125, 
293, 316, 317, 319. 

Hamilton’s, Campi Phlegraei, ii. 
17, 18. 

Henry, Philip, ii. 82. 

Hooker, i. 267. 

Howe, i. 268 ; ii. IS. 

Hughes, Rev. Joseph, i. 9, 10, 15, 
24, 37, 41, 49, 52, 59, 67, 122, 
150, ISO, 181, 244, 257, 263 ; ii. 
3-3, 141, 161. 

I. 

Intermediate State, ii. 234, 236. 
Ireland, i. 25, 188; ii. 73, 84, 100, 
107, 125, 151, 199, 274, 299. 

J. 

Johnson, Dr. i. 11, 14, 129, 224. 

K. 

Kinghorne, Rev. J. i. 22. 

L. 

Langdon, Rev. T. i. 50. 

League, Anti-Corn-Law, ii. 295, 
299. 

Leslie, i. 211. 

Luther, ii. 213. 

M. 

Marshman, Dr. ii. 66, 103. (Vide 
Serampore.) 

Methodists, i. 288 ; ii. 36, 46, 50, 
92, 226, 245. 

Millennium, ii. 256. 

Milton, i. Ill, 148, 184, 206. 
Monuments, ii. 28, 31. 

More, Mrs. H. i. 11, 21, 274; ii 
173, 191. 


Hall, Robert, i. 9, 19, 50, 93, 144, 


388 


INDEX. 


N. 

Necessity, i. 56, 62, 64, 120. 
Newton, Rev. J. i. 120. 

O . 

O’Connell, ii. 123, 195, 203, 247, 
260. 

Okely, Dr. ii. 124. 

Ordination, Dissenting, ii. 71. 

P. 

Paley, i. 61 ; ii. 28. 

Pascal, i. 207, 237, 241 ; ii. 42, 
43. 

Peel, Sir R., ii. 75, 295. 

Plato, ii. 308. 

Poland, ii. 76, 127. 

Punishment, Future, i. 27, 67; ii. 
262, 290. 

R. 

Rainmohunroy, ii. 142, 157. 
Ramsay, Allan, i. 126. 

Reform-bill, ii. 75-80, 128, 262 
Revolution, French, i. 40, 43, 59, 
274; ii. 126, 288. 

Rousseau, i. 77. 

Ryland, Dr i. 91, 185; ii. 45, 305. 


S. 

Serampore Missionaries, i. 282, 
284, 285 ; ii. 66-69, 90, 95, 101. 
Scotland, Church of, ii. 250, 300. 
Scott, Walter, ii. 41, 125, 229. 
Shakspeare, i. 137, 184, 234. 
Snowdon, i. 250. 

Socialists, ii. 270. 

Southey, i. 226, 274, 293 ; ii. 336. 
Stanley, Lord, ii. 260. 

Suffrage, Universal, ii. 202, 224. 
Swift, ii. 125. 

T. 

Taylor, Isaac, ii. 44, 243, 247. 
Taylor, Jeremy, i. 267, 269; ii. 
322. 

Thornbury Church, i. 150. 

Tooke, Horne, i. 181, 205 
Tracts, Oxford, ii. 144, 247. 

W. 

Wade, Mr. ii. 202, 275. 

Wakefield, i. 260. 

Walker, i. 260. 

Watts, Dr. i. 64, 186 ; ii. 269. 
Wesley, i. 238 ; 40. 

Wilberforce, i. 218; ii. 7, 174, 301. 
Woollett, ii. 273. 


END OF THE SECOND VOLUME. 


I 


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